Understanding In A Car Crash
by peggsgrl724
Summary: Stephen and Samantha's lives have literally crashed in to one another, now they must not only find a way to survive this accidental meeting, but the memories that up until this moment they have run away from.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The silence that followed the collision was almost deafening in comparison to the noise of the crash itself.. It returned all at once instead of gradually, settling in and enfolding Stephen much like a cocoon will enfold the promise of the new life that exists inside of it. It frightened him a bit, this calm serenity, it seemed unreal, impossible, completely out of place with the violence that had preceded it and the pain he himself was beginning to experience. In his mind, the world should have responded to the events being played out, there should have been a vociferous roll of thunder from the heavens, an angry upheaval from the earth beneath him, something, anything to signify that his agony was not his and his alone. Instead a breeze soughed the branches of the trees above him, night birds resumed their chatter, and the world continued as ceaselessly as it always had, untouched, unfazed, unmoved.

He had been driving too fast, this thought occurred to him next. It was a common mistake of his, always in a hurry, always needing to be somewhere other than where he was, and more often than not needing to be there five minutes prior to his actual arrival.

"You'll be late for your own funeral Stephen," his mother's words, engrained upon his mind from years of having heard them and the irony of this phrase suddenly left him a little chilled as too quickly he realized the possibility of finding out the validity of this statement might be coming sooner than he had once anticipated.

"You'll be late for your own funeral." It was funny that this notion had once amused him, and yet, at that moment, he could find no amusement in it whatsoever, only a sense of dread and a rushing sense at that.

His next thought was of the severity of his injuries. He had purposelessly avoided doing an assessment of them, or maybe it hadn't been purposely, either way by the time he finally got around to figuring out how hurt he truly was the pain had gone from being merely uncomfortable to downright excruciating. Much of it was centered around the top of his head, no doubt from his journey through the windshield.

"Fasten your seatbelt Stephen," another bit of advice his mother had always given him, another bit he had chosen to ignore as well.

He hadn't bothered strapping himself in that night, could clearly remember the moment that had come and gone in the blink of an eye. He had been in a hurry, always in a hurry, and even as he had started the car and pulled away from the restaurant, the notion that he might regret his choice to remain unharnassed never occurred to him. He was Stephen Morgan after all, unbreakable, accomplished, renowned even, nothing could touch him, nothing could harm him, he controlled his life not the other way around and if he wanted to tempt fate by remaining unbelted he would do so.

"Good choice," he whispered aloud to himself and no one else.

Anyway it was his head that hurt the most and without having to lift a hand to it, even if he could, he could feel the damage. A vision came to him all at once of a melon split wide, it's seeds spilling forth and he prayed that this was merely a figment of his overactive imagination and not a true picture of what his own head might look like.

His legs were the next problem. They felt wooden, useless, there was very little pain which at first had seemed like a good thing but very gradually seemed less so. He had a vague recollection of the way he had landed once he had been catapulted through the window glass, and this recollection told him the lack of pain ,might turn out to be more of a problem than a blessing.

In a burst of insight that lasted for all of five seconds at best, he saw himself spending the rest of eternity in a wheelchair, crippled, his worthless appendages withering away from lack of mobility and use. It was a scary thought and surprisingly only pushed aside when the thought that he might not live to see this moment intruded upon it. For a moment he pondered this, was it better to die a man, whole for the most part, or to spend the rest of his days confined, pitiful, needing more than wanting. He had no answer and very quickly decided this was probably a good thing as well. Best to let fate decide lord knew it would whether or not he tried to control or influence it.

Other than his legs and his head the remainder of his injuries were superfluous, or to be more exact less severe. Of course this was a little like being shot and saying other than this huge smoking wound through my heart I'm just fine. This thought he did find humor in and how it was he managed to laugh he didn't bother to question, but laugh he did, gruffly, almost breathlessly though it ended in a hoarse cough, one which left his mouth full of blood and only made him feel more frightened than he already had.

"I don't want to die, not now, not like this. " He couldn't afford tears but they came nonetheless and he gave into them, weeping gently as he felt himself sway in and out of consciousness for a time, never completely giving into the darkness. Merely grazing it, feeling it's pull, but unable to succumb.

It was the moaning that drew him fully back to reality and at first and for a long time after the soft utterance he was certain it had come from his own lips. He felt very much like moaning, not only from the pain but from his own self indulging pity, born out of a sudden want to live that he was certain he had never addressed inside of himself before. Sure, no one wants to die, it's not something that most people , or rather most sane people look upon as a welcome intrusion on their day to day existence. But this was different. This was facing the yawing maw of immortality head on, sensing its inevitability and rebelling against it with ever fiber in your being.

The moaning drew him away from it, from the edge of that maw and it was only then that he was reminded that he had not been alone in the trauma this night. There had been a second car, one he vaguely remembered seeing in his head lights right before he had flown through the night with all the grace of an eagle, landing with all the grace of a sack of wet diapers.

"Hello!" His voice, barely a whisper, sounded strange even to his own ears, raspy, foreign, and in that one word he heard such a level of pain and fear that it frightened him to no ends. It sounded like the voice of a man who was accepting his fate, embracing it, giving in to it.

"Hello," this time he called as loud as he could, the fear was still there, as was the pain, but gone was the sounds of settling and for this he was momentarily grateful. He had never been a quitter, not once in all his 38 years of living had he ever merely given up on anything, and he wasn't about to start then, not when his tenacity meant his very own survival.

"Help me."

His first thought was that the voice he heard in response was that of a woman, and from every conceivable place inside of him guilt began to creep. In too many ways, he was there, she was there because of him, her suffering, and it did indeed sound as if she was suffering, was a result of his stupidity. The guilt swallowed him whole and for a time overrode anything else including his ability to speak.

"Are you still there? I'm pinned, I can't move," she called next and it was her urgency that shook him from his own reverie this time.

"I'm here."

"What…what happened?"

"There was an accident," he told her, omitting a lot of the facts for the time being deciding at least for the moment it was best to concentrate on the events at hand. Later, if there was a later for either of them, they could hammer out the why's and what fors, but right then and there, getting out of the moment alive was what mattered most.

"Where are you? I…I can't see anything."

Thus far Stephen had done his best to simply lie still, remembering one thing, if nothing else he had ever heard in reference to emergency treatment, never move the victim until the extent of their injuries had been established. Other than a quick assessment, he had no idea how severely injured he might be, and because of this, he had simply remained upon the ground where he had no doubt landed, his face in the crushed grass beneath him that had already begun to cool in the night air. But her words inspired him to lift his head, slowly, cautiously, with great care and for the first time since he had awoken he allowed his attention to turn to something other than his own wounds.

As near as he could tell, they were in some sort of clearing in the trees just beyond the road both of them had been traveling on, to his right was a sharp incline marked with now broken trees, to his left was shadows enfolding what appeared to be a slight incline leading down no doubt to the stream he had spotted and crossed over several miles back when he had been driving. Not the greatest place in the world to come to rest, but far better than many he supposed. It was during his survey that he spotted his car, though the word car could only be used in the loosest since of the word for the twisted mass of metal his eyes rested upon. His vehicle had at one time been a grey jag, custom leather seating, stereo surround sound, heated seats, enough room for five adults easily. It had been the first thing he had purchased for himself when his career had begun to take off and God but he had loved it, loved what it symbolized, loved how he had felt behind the wheel of it. In that car, he had been the master of his future, the king of his destiny, a blazing star on his way up.

There would be no salvaging it that much was apparent as it seemed the entire vehicle had become wrapped around the trunk of a rather large, almost menacing looking tree. If he had remained inside of it, he too would have been wrapped around the same tree, and for the first time he managed to find a little gratitude not only for the fact that he had been thrown clear, but that he had managed to survive at all.

"Are you still there?"

"I'm here," He responded to her urgent words, turning slowly toward the sound of her voice. The car she had been driving was small, smaller even then his jag, an ugly blue that reminded him for all the world of a bruise. It was a rental, no doubt about that, and though it appeared for the most part intact, he had a feeling that first looks would no doubt be deceiving on this. The entire vehicle was upside down, it lay upon it's roof like a squashed insect, and though at ground level he should have been able to see right into the front seat, it was turned in such a way that he could not.

"How badly are you injured?' He asked next, and when silence followed this question he felt himself panic a little. It was enough for him to know that he was the reason both of them were there and hurt, he wasn't certain he could live with the idea that his foolishness had taken an innocent life.

"I…I can't tell." She whispered finally, and he let out a sigh of relief. "My legs are pinned beneath the steering wheel and I can't focus on anything but them. What about you?"

"My head hurts like hell. I think I went through the windshield, and…I can't feel my legs."

Saying this out loud, admitting this even to a nameless faceless disembodied voice frightened Stephen, it made it all too real, and that was the last thing he wanted , was for it to be real. Everything about the night had a dream like quality to it, even before the accident he remembered thinking that events had flowed one into the next much like they sometimes did when he had been drinking, back in the dark days, back before he had found both the wisdom and the strength to turn his life around. He hadn't touched a drop for nearly five years, a fact he was proud of and yet he knew right then and there if some how, magically, an aged bottle of brandy managed to fall out of the sky he would cast his sobriety aside in a heartbeat for a few moments relief from the pain and the fear now gnawing at him.

"I don't remember what happened, do you?" Her voice drew him back from these troubling revelations in his mind, and with a sigh he lowered his head once more to the cooling grass.

"Vaguely," he whispered.

"Was it…did I cause this?" For a moment he ignored her words, knowing it would be too easy to allow her to think the accident had been of her doing, entirely too easy, just open his mouth say yes that was all it would take and at least for the time being she would believe it. Eventually, when the shock wore off, she would no doubt recall the truth, but for a time at least, someone in the world would feel the guilt and the anger he was feeling at that moment toward himself.

"No, it wasn't you." He heard himself admit however, a little surprised with all the lies he had told in his life how easily the truth slipped from his lips. "I was driving too fast, not paying attention, my cell phone…."

Hastily he lifted his head once more and looked toward the wreckage of his jag. Somewhere in the midst of the twisted metal was his phone, his life line, his tie to the real world. It would be impossible to locate and just as quickly as the thought of finding it came to him, he pushed it aside reclining once more.

"You alright out there?" The trapped woman questioned him once more and he knew without having to be told that this time she was not asking in reference to his injuries.

"Yeah…I guess. I'm sorry for this, sorry for all of this."

"That's why they're called accidents, because there not planned."

A ghost of a smile crossed his lips as he again felt the pull of sleep. It was a comforting sensation, completely normal in a world that no longer seemed as such and even before he gave into it he had known he would.

"You shouldn't fall asleep," her voice startled him awake and he opened his eyes for a moment forgetting where he was, how he got there and why he was laying on the cold ground. He had been dreaming he was in school, a child back in his primary days. Reality came back to him in a rush however, and with a sigh he lifted his head again toward the sky, trying to figure how long he had been out this time.

"I'm awake now," he said softly.

"How long do you think it'll take before someone realizes we are missing?"

He hadn't thought along these lines, had automatically assumed help would be along shortly, but her question forced him to consider all the facts he might have otherwise overlooked. The road he had been driving, both of them had been driving in fact, was secluded, out of the way. He himself had chosen this route because it shaved at least ten minutes off his drive time and more than anything else that night he had wanted to get home, to put his feet up, sip a cup of tea and forget for a time who and what he was. No one knew his planned itinerary. They simply knew he had left the party with the explicit instructions that he not be bothered for the rest of the night.

He had an appointment at ten in the morning, an interview in fact, but until then he wouldn't be missed and suddenly 10 am seemed an eternity away.

"I…I don't know," he was suddenly forced to admit, realizing on top of everything else that had just occurred to him that not showing for the interview did not guarantee anyone would come in search of him. He had missed appointments before, skipped them in fact, it wasn't unusual for him to disappear for a few days and even if by some odd chance some one realized this time might be different, no one would ever think to come looking for him in the place he now found himself. One more glance toward the road above them only further proved what he had already concluded from his first survey, they were isolated, hidden even, any car driving by would have to know the exact place they went off the road to even locate them and the chances of that happening were about the same as him winning an Oscar for his last movie appearance.

"Does anyone know you are even out here? Did you tell anyone where you were going?'

"That wouldn't have been possible, I took a wrong turn about five miles back, I was lost and besides, I don't really have anyone I could tell. I came here on vacation alone."

Somewhere inside of Stephen's mind he heard a door slam, loudly, loud enough to reverberate almost painfully throughout his head and hastily he shook the noise it made away not wanting to think what it meant.

"we're gonna die out here aren't we?'

Of all the things she could have said, this was the last thing he wanted to hear, and though a protest rose up inside of him he was surprised to find he didn't have the strength to voice it.

"I don't know." This was the closest he could come, and even to his own ears it sounded pitiful.

"I don't want to die out here, not like this," he heard her tears and her words, reminiscent of his own and once again the protest rose inside of him, dying on his lips however just as it had before.

For several moments he simply lay his head back down, grateful for the cold grass that immediately had a calming affect on him. Then the car, her rental car shifted a little, not much, barely an inch or two.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to free my legs from this damn steering wheel." She was still crying, and for the first time since she had spoken to him he found himself wishing he could see her, look her in the eyes, share her pain and fear that so matched his own." It's no use," Silence once more as she gave up the struggle.

"What's your name?" Silence followed his question, a long silence that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, and when she finally responded he knew she had not spoken sooner for the simple reason that she had been trying to regain control of herself, at least somewhat.

"Sam, my name is Sam. Samantha actually, but no one has called me that since I was a kid."

"I'm Stephen Sam,"

"I'd like to say I'm pleased to meet you, but under the circumstances…:

For the second time, a ghost of a smile crossed Stephen's lips as he lifted his head in her general direction.

"Where ya from Sam?"

"California, and before you ask, no I do not know and stars."

His smile became a small laugh all at once, and this surprised him as he had been all but certain he would never hear laughter again, especially from himself.

"I'm scared Stephen," she said next and the laughter slipped away as rapidly as it had come leaving him feeling hollow and empty for several moments.

"So am I," he admitted.

"I wish I could see you at least, it's a little disconcerting talking to a faceless voice."

"I was thinking the same thing."

Without realizing he had done so, Stephen felt himself inch forward in the grass. Here was very little pain to speak of as he did this and with only the slightest bit if hesitation, he pushed himself forward several more inches. He managed all of a foot at best before his body seemed to awaken to what he was doing and a flair of pain stopped him cold, sending shivers throughout his system and forcing him to bite his lip to keep from crying out. After that he simply stayed where he was for a time, feeling the push pull of consciousness, certain that any moment he would again go teetering over the edge of the abyss into sleep.

"Can you at least talk to me? Tell me about yourself a little. Say anything, I don't care…just talk," This wasn't a question on her part, it was a plea and slowly Stephen extricated himself fropm the fingers of oblivion that had been playing over his mind.

"Like I said, my name is Stephen…Stephen Morgan," He paused as he always did when he gave his full name, waiting for the usual burst of surprised recognition that generally followed, only this time it didn't come and oddly enough he was grateful for this. Somehow, amidst everything that had happened and was yet occurring it would have been a little too morbid if the woman, Samantha or Sam rather, had heard of him, seen his movie, perhaps been one of those fawning fans that both frightened and excited him at times, the ones who said they would do anything for him, and generally meant it.

"What do you do Stephen?" She asked him, and the ghost of a smile returned as he realized she truly had no clue who he was, had never heard of him, or at least for the time being couldn't recall having heard of him.

"Not much if you want to know the truth. "

"Are you retired or something?"

"Not yet," he whispered, again that flash of insight followed these words, visions of himself trapped inside a wheelchair and as hastily as possible he tossed hem off.

"I'm only 38," he told her next, and from her place of entombment there was only silence. "You still there?"

"No, I popped out for donuts and coffee, how do you drink yours?'

It was a joke, and the fact that she could make one, even one as semi lame as this, forced Stephen's ghost to become a full blown smile.

"I'm British love…we prefer tea."

"Right, I forgot."

The rental car shifted again, ever so slightly as if she was attempting to make herself more comfortable and the frustrated sigh that followed this movement told him she was having trouble doing so.

"So what about you Sam? Are you married, kids? Tell me a little about you."

"Not married, I was but…let's just say I beat that wrap and managed to escape with almost all my dignity intact."

"No kids?' He questioned, laying his head flat against the ground once more, and again feeling the push pull of unconsciousness. It was her silence this time that drew him back, not all at once, but gradually as he began to realize it was not the silence of someone unable to find words, but that of a person who had the words and didn't want to speak them aloud.

"Sam?"

"I…we…had a daughter, Sabrina, she…passed away about eight years ago. She was 7 at the time. The doctors said it was an aneurism."

The perfunctory apology rose to Stephen's lips and he bit it back quickly, knowing from experience how hollow and lacking it often sounded in these sort of circumstances.

"So sorry Stephen. Our apologies on your loss," these words filled his own mind until he found the strength of will to rebury them.

"Sabrina…that's a beautiful name," he whispered instead.

"It fit her…so well. She was a beautiful little girl."

Stephen gave her a moment, sensing somehow that she needed it and while he waited for her to gather herself he found himself thinking of the child he himself had lost.

Nathan had been seven, and though he hadn't been taken from him the way Sam's Sabrina had, he might just as well have in the end. It had been nine years since he had seen his son, not because he couldn't simply because Stephen himself had chosen not to.

"It'll be better this way mum. Much better for him."

"For him …or for you?" He remembered she had used the same lecturing voice she used when telling him to buckle his seat belt or eat his vegetables only this time there had been that hint of disapproval in her eyes, a hint that had later become full blown, undeniable.

"Anyway…after she passed, her father and I realized she had been the glue holding us together, without her, there was no reason for us to go on as a couple and we went our separate ways."

"I'm sorry Sam," he whispered finally, though the apology in this moment was anything but perfunctory. He was indeed sorry, for her, for her tragedy, for his own losses, for the hand of fate that threw the two of them together on that road.

"So now I live alone on the beach. I have two dogs, Skippy and Shep. I'm a substitute teacher at the local high school, and a full time writer."

"Anything I might have heard of?' he asked brushing at the tears that had miraculously appeared in his eyes without him realizing they had done so.

"Mostly poetry. I did publish a novel…it didn't do very well though I'm afraid. I'm working on another right now, or at least I was before I came here. It's crap though, which is probably why I didn't bother to bring it with me."

Again there was a shifting in the rental car and he lifted his head toward it until it again settled and became still.

"Are…are you alright?"

"I'm not sure how much longer I can stand my legs being pinned like this. They're swelling, at least it feels like they are swelling and to make matters worse, my head is beginning to ache from being upside down."

Until that moment it had not even occurred to Stephen that she was upside down, in spite of the fact that he could plainly see the car was, he hadn't really put two and two together and came up with four, four being that Sam herself was still strapped into her seat, held there by the dash pinning her legs and hence keeping her from righting herself.

"How long can a person stay upside down before there head explodes from gathering blood?" Her question was no doubt meant to be somewhat of a joke, but he heard very little humor in her voice, in fact, if he had to pick apart, and with nothing else to do this is precisely what he did, he would have to say what he heard was more panic than anything else.

"I think you're safe, for the time being," he responded, wishing he could have sounded more reassuring and less frightened.

"So you have a child too huh?'

For a moment Stephen lifted his head and looked toward the shadowed space separating him from her place of captivity.

"Did I tell you that?" He questioned genuinely confused as to whether or not he had voiced his thoughts about his son or not.

"You didn't have to. I just…I don't know kind of got that feeling. Woman's intuition."

"I didn't know it was so bloody accurate," he teased, pressing his cheek against the grass once more.

"Not gonna tell me about it," she stated and he realized he had fallen silent for a time, might have even drifted off a bit, he was no longer certain. The lines between sleep and wake had begun to blur a little for him and slow he lifted a hand to his wounded head touching it gingerly, enough to feel the blood thickening into goo, enough to spark a flare of pain that shook him out of his reverie and forced him to realize he was indeed awake.

"It's a long story, a little on the complicated side," he told her finally hearing her sigh a little in response to these words.

"Yeah, better not to tell it then, I've got an appointment at the hairdresser in about an hour, I would hate to miss the end of it."

"How can you do that?" He questioned, saying the words without fully meaning to give them voice.

"Do what?"

"Make jokes, even bad ones, at a time like this?"

"I'm a trooper, or at least that's what my mother always used to tell me when I was growing up"

"A trooper eh…what does that mean exactly?'

"I'm not really sure to be honest with you, as near as I can figure that makes me someone who can find a way to make it through any shit storm life throws her way, and believe me, I'm weathered my fair share of brown blizzards with nothing more than a quip."

"Eloquent," he found himself laughing at this however, a short lived chuckle that again ended with a mouth full of blood. Which he hastily spat out as much as he could.

"Yeah, that's me, elegance and sophistication personified."

Stephen had nothing to say to this, the bitter taste in his mouth robbed him of his ability to speak. He hadn't thought much about internal injuries, the external ones were enough for him to deal with at the time of his awakening, but now he did. The fact that he was coughing up blood alone told him something was definitely wrong inside of him, something had been punctured, or crushed or both for that matter. He assumed it was a lung, though his breathing felt as normal as possible under the circumstances, a little shallow, but he had assumed this was to be expected considering the fear that was constantly gnawing at him. He wandered about it now though, wondered if it was indeed normal.

"Don't leave me Stephen," he wasn't certain at first if Sam had said this or if they were echoed words from his past as they were so similar to ones he had heard before, spoken in the same low voice, gently pleading. "Stephen, did you hear me?"

He lifted his head and looked toward the blue car.

"Don't leave me Stephen, stay with me."

He wanted to tell her he wasn't going anywhere, make some sort of joke, the type she herself was made, but it wasn't in him at that moment, humor had died for the time being as too quickly he realized precisely in what way she meant these words. She knew some how, perhaps the same way she had known about his son, that he was thinking about death, dying, the great unknown; though he hadn't really given his notions focus enough to come up with these analogies.

"We're in this together Stephen, you and me, and we're gonna come out of it the same way, together, got it."

"Is that you being a trooper?' he questioned, brushing at his eyes where tears had formed without his notice. Up until that night, he had never been much of a crier, in fact finding the ability to weep had kept him from landing many a movie role in his illustrious career.

"He just isn't believable; his emotions are too stiff, too forced."

What they didn't know, what he had never bothered to share with any of them, was that he could cry if he wanted to, cry so hard and with so much emotion it would have no doubt forced anyone around him to do the same. The trick to it was tapping into your own pain, finding that one memory that would set off the waterworks. He had a thousand of them; vivid, raw images that made him ache from the very depths of his wounded soul. He chose to leave them alone however, not because they didn't demand his attention at times. Simply because using them, feeding on them in sense would have cheapened them somehow, and that was something he could not and would not do, cheapen her memory or the memory of her loss.

"I was sixteen when I met Sabrina's father,' Again her voice drew him back, but this time the yawing maw he had been teetering on was far less welcome then that of oblivion and he turned his back and attention away from it gratefully embracing her intrusion into his thoughts.

"We went to high school together."

"Please, go on." he whispered to her, laying his head against the grass and closing his eyes, letting himself drift a, little as he listened to her tale woven almost musical by her soft voice.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"I was always just Sam to everyone," she said to the shadows, automatically turning her head to where she was certain Stephen was laying. She couldn't see him; the damaged roof blocked her view and kept her from making the final connection that eye contact would have created between the two of them. He was fading, in and out, of that he was almost certain, and in spite of her own wounds, her own pain, the seeming ceaseless flow of blood that was trickling down the side of her neck and pooling beneath her head, she was more concerned for him.

"You always put everyone else's pain ahead of your own, you know that don't you." Surprisingly enough these words had come from Dan, her now ex husband and the man she had at one time been certain she would spend the rest of her life with

She had lied a bit to her fellow crash victim Stephen, losing Sabrina hadn't awoken them to the fact that there marriage was over, it had, in truth, been the reason it had ended.

In her mind, Sam had done everything she possibly could have done to ease Dan's suffering at the loss of their only child, she had given him a shoulder to cry on, had held him in the night when the memories had haunted him the most, she had held his hand, walked beside him as they had laid Sabrina to rest. What she hadn't done, had addressed the loss from her own perspective. She had been so busy making sure Dan was alright, that her parents were weathering their pain, Dan's parents as well, that she hadn't bothered to stop and think about how Sabrina's absence might be affecting her.

"You have to let it out Sam, if you don't it's gonna rip you part from the inside, you and us." Again it was Dan who had said this, and had she bothered to listen, truly listen to his words instead of simply brushing them aside, she wasn't sure if they would have made a difference at the time. She didn't want to feel the ache coming from her heart, didn't want to look deep within herself and come face to face with her own grief. It was easier to pretend it wasn't there, to ignore it and go on

For two years that was precisely what she had done, ignored the maelstrom gathering inside her, she worked, she wrote, she kept the house clean, fixed Dan's meals, everything she had done before all the while turning a blind eye to the festering storm clouds growing on the horizon.

It was on Christmas of all days, not the first one without Sabrina, nor the second, but the third. By then everyone else had learned to go on, had let go of their grief but kept the memories just as they were supposed to do, just as she was supposed to have done. By then they had all stopped worrying over her, had assumed she supposed that they accepted that she was fine just as she had been telling them all along, just as she had insisted nearly a million times over.

Everything had been perfect, from the decorations to the dinner that she had spent nearly two days preparing. Her family had arrived, as had Dan's all decked out in their fineries talking and laughing, sipping wine, lifting their glasses of eggnogs for toasts. The presents had followed, and still she had been functioning normally. It was her own father who had set her off, and accidentally at that.

"Looks like there's one more gift, way in the back here, with Sam's name on it," he had said with a mischievous smile, leaning toward the tree, nearly into it in fact. His arm had brushed the decorations, accidentally of course, and with a soft tinkle it had fallen, crashing to the floor and splintering into a million pieces. It had been the decoration Sabrina had made for her when she had been in kindergarten. It wasn't anything of value to anyone but her, just a small glass bulb painted with glue and sprinkled with glitter. Sabrina had been so proud of it, had insisted it be put on the tree immediately.

"I was supposed to put my name on it, but it wouldn't fit." The little girl has stated hanging the bulb and stepping back to admire it.

Sam had watched it break, watch yet one more connection to her daughter be severed and from every part of her the protest had risen, erupting with all the violence of a simmering storm.

They'd had to call a doctor in that night, he'd sedated her, heavily in fact, and for the next four weeks she had remained in bed unable to find the strength to rise, crying for all that had been taken away, every golden chance Sabrina might have had, all the things she had never had a chance to do or see.

"It isn't fair, it just isn't fair," she remembered yelling this at Dan who had done his best to be there for her the way she had been there for him, but had sadly failed, and miserably at that. He wasn't where she was in the grief process, he had faced his own anger and frustration and had moved on to the final phase, acceptance.

In retrospect, it was probably this, more so than anything that drove the wedge between them. She wanted him to grieve with her and he couldn't was incapable of doing so, not because he didn't feel it, simply because it didn't feel it as intensely as she did. Time had healed him whereas she had trapped herself in a bubble, a dark festering one at that.

"Maybe it's for the best." Dan had lasted six months after her breakdown, and that was the only way she could label what had happened. It had indeed been a breakdown, and the miracle wasn't that it had finally happened; it was that she had managed somehow to come out of it with even the smallest shred of sanity intact.

"Maybe it's for the best." He had told her this over his shoulder, as he was walking away, and though she hadn't truly wanted to believe it at the time, she had come to do so over time.

After that, she had been alone for the first time in her life, literally the first time. It had been scary in a way, not having anyone else to count on but herself, and there had been those nights, those long lonely nights when she would stand on the edge of her own repaired sanity and feel the urge to just toss it aside, everything, and simply give in to her pain, her anger, her fears, her solitude. In the end, it wasn't her memories of Sabrina that kept her from doing this, nor was it thoughts of her family, or even thoughts of herself. It was Dan who in the end saved her, strange but true. She knew if she gave in, if she gave up, he alone would bear the guilt of her, spend the rest of his days wondering what he could have done differently, certain he should have tried. Sam couldn't bring herself to burden him the way she felt burdened over their daughter. Guilt was a hefty load, and the last thing she wanted was weigh him down anymore than already was.

"I guess some part of me will always love him."

For a moment she was uncertain whether or not she said this aloud, not just these words, but the entire story, has speaking it in that moment and to the perfect stranger named Stephen, which in all honesty he was at that, had never been her intention.

"So many things beyond our control, the heart is but one of them," he whispered softly, and as much as was possible she nodded her head in agreement with this." So what happened to him, after he left I mean?"

"He's remarried now," Sam said aloud surprised to find that even after three years this fact still got to her.

Dan had met a woman named Alyssa, the two of them had done it up right a phrase her father had often used when she was growing up and in this case it meant they had had the wedding that Sam herself had always dreamed of, white dress, bride's maids, the whole nine yards. Part of her had wanted to be angry about that, but she had after a great deal of internal struggle simply let her anger go. They had two little boys now and the last time she had seen him, he had looked happy, happy in ways she was certain she herself would never achieve.

"So he got married and you…came here for holiday?"

In spite of herself Sam smiled a little at this.

"No, I actually made a life for myself, sort of."

"How do you sort of make a life for yourself?" He questioned with a hint of teasing in his voice, and in spite of herself Sam sighed a little at this.

There really was no other way to describe her day to day since Sabrina's death and Dan's departure as anything other than a sort of life. She'd gone back to work, started writing, got herself an apartment, had even made an attempt at dating though she had struggled with this, struggled and found herself to be pretty poor in this area.

Eventually she just sort of left the whole dating thing alone, put it on the back burner and left it to simmer, and of course, when she was least expecting it, that was when she met him, this time the him being Carl Mathers, a fellow teacher, and the first man to see her naked other than Dan who was literally the first.

"Carl was, in every conceivable way, the exact opposite of Dan."

Dan had always been outgoing, an extrovert who loved to have a good time and made sure he did no matter where they were or what they were doing. Carl on the other hand was a little lost inside of himself, moody to the point of being angsty, a lost soul it sometimes seemed, and it was probably this attribute, more so than any other that drew Sam to him.

"he was a painter, or at least he wanted to be," She went on to explain, thinking back to the angry canvases Carl used to create that screamed of his inner turmoil, gave it voice in ways that he himself had difficulty in doing. Sam had wanted to save him, and like a lot of woman, she had believed loving him or at the very least caring deeply for him would be enough to do so. In Carl's case, her feelings had been like a band aid for a time, temporary covering the wounds, but in truth never healing them.

"About two years ago he killed himself," she stated, surprised to find it was much easier to say this aloud than it had been before. The pain of his loss had, the grief and mourning process had happened right on schedule with Carl, and she was to the point now where the ache had dulled, not faded completely, simply dulled enough to at least speak about it.

"Wow…I'm, I'm so sorry," the faceless stranger whispered.

"I was too," she admitted. "But even before it happened, I think I knew he and I were not meant to be together forever. It was a symbiotic relationship at best, he fed off my emotions, used them to fuel his own, and the happier being with him made me, the more depressed he seemed to become. Sad really, but I have since come to realize that part of him was already dead, deep inside something had killed the parts of him that might have allowed him to function normally, to feel and adapt. There but for the grace of God go I."

There was no response to this from the darkness beyond the car and in Stephen's silence, Sam took the time to make another attempt at freeing her legs though she had all but decided doing so was futile. There was very little pain left in them any longer, they had gone beyond the crampy feeling that she had experienced upon waking and now they were simply numb a state she was certain was worse rather than better. Again her movements ended only in frustration and with a sigh she laid her head back against her seat, feeling momentarily woozy.

"You alright in there?" Stephen questioned, and she smiled a little at this, certain if she told him the truth he would be even more scared than he already sounded. She was far from alright, and traveling further from it by the moment. As if to further prove this point yet another trickle of blood ran down her neck and dripped into the pool beneath her.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she lied easily, and he would no doubt believe her, just as Dan had for the three years she had masked her grief behind these words. "Just fine,"

"So what did inspire you to finally take this holiday?" Stephen asked and again she smiled a little as his words knowing he was encouraging her to keep speaking, not doubt for the same reason she had encouraged him earlier, because his voice had been like a life line, pulling her back from the shadows, keeping her focused on the moment rather than other moments perhaps in the not so distant future when the light of life would begin to wane and giving into this would seem so much easier than fighting it.

"Honestly," she played along for the time being, though she was beginning to tire. "I was in the mall several weeks back, me and some friends, shopping, and they dragged me into see this psychic named Madame Zoltar."

She closed her eyes for a moment and could picture the old supposedly gypsy woman as she had looked that day, not her attire, which had been as colorful and eclectic as one might expect a gypsy psychic's outfit to look, but the woman herself, the intensity of her gaze, the way it had focused on Sam as she predicted her future, or at least pretended to do so.

"You will travel." The old woman had said, though she really hadn't been all that old, late forties early fifties. It was her demeanor that made her seemed far more aged, a knowing in her eyes, wisdom. "Part of you will not want to make this journey, and you will attempt to find reasons for not doing so. But you must go, your destiny, your future, it depends upon you going."

"What are you saying, she's gonna find her destiny, her future happiness while on vacation." Holly had asked this, Sam's best friend since high school, and her mocking tone had earned her a scathing look from Madame Zoltar.

"I didn't say that. Sometimes…" And with that she had again focused her attention on Sam who had oddly enough felt her flesh prickle a little in that moment. "…sometimes the destiny that awaits us is not a happy one, it is painful, difficult, agonizing to face, and yet…facing it might be the only path to the happiness we seek to find."

"Are you telling me that you came to London at the urgings of a gypsy psychic," Stephen's mocking tone forced a smile yet again to Sam's lips as she realized how truly ridiculous this must sound to him.

"Sort of, but not really. My grandfather actually is…or rather …was British. I mean I didn't really know him, he and my grandmother divorced years ago and she moved to the states. Anyway he passed away, and for some unknown reason, he left everything to me."

She had gotten a call from his lawyer one day out of the blue. By then she had pretty much forgotten all about Madame Zoltar, had dismissed her words as nonsense at best. The phone call had brought them all back however, and within a week's time, she was on a plane and bound for a city she had never truly considered visiting and was just about certain she wouldn't enjoy.

"So what'd he leave you?" Stephen questioned.

"About a hundred thousand pounds, a rotting house that would probably take three times that much to repair, a car that doesn't run, and 25 cats."

"Did you say 25 cats?"

"Yeah," she heard him laugh a little at this; she also heard that laughter turn to a rattley, loose sounding cough that she was certain wasn't a good sign on his part. He was hurt, far worse than he had let on, and immediately she knew that like her, he was keeping his condition a secret to spare her feelings.

"So what'd you do, with the cats, the house, the car, and the money?" He questioned, his voice sounding far weaker than it had before.

"Well, I signed the house off, just gave it over to the bank. Turns out my grandfather stilled owed a little on it, and they took it as payment. The car I had towed away, where it went I can't be certain, the cats were the hardest part of it. Most of then were a little wild, a lot of them escaped before animal control or whatever you guys call them could take them into custody, so they are roaming free somewhere, the rest went to an animal shelter, and the money, well I kept that of course, had the bulk of it wired to my account back in the states, kept a little here for traveling money, extended my vacation by another few weeks, and rented this car. I was intending to see the rest of your country by auto."

"And you only got this far?"

"Yeah, then I met you," she stated, unable to help herself but to laugh a little at this. What were the odds, astronomical at best? Ten minutes out of London she had gotten lost as many of the roads were unmarked, so rural and so old that finding the right one was akin to finding a needle in a haystack. She had chosen the road where the two of them had collided as a whim and nothing more, had in fact had three choices as far as paths she could take having reached a crossroads a short ways back.

"If I had known Madame Zoltar was right all along, I would have gone left instead of right."

"What are you saying that this is the destiny she warned you about?"

"I don't know…right about now…I am a lot more apt to believe that then anything."

He didn't respond to this right away, and she didn't urge him to speak as she had earlier. Sam sensed some how that his silence was self imposed rather than one brought on by pain. He was dealing with his own guilt, that much she already knew had heard it in his voice more than once thus far. He blamed himself entirely for their accident, for her injuries, for the fact that she might not walk away from the crash. Some part of her knew he was at fault as well. He had been distracted, had crossed he line and hit her head on. But she didn't really blame him, couldn't find it in herself to do so, after all, it was her destiny or so she was coming to believe, he had merely been the tool with which it had been brought to her.

"I won't let you die," he said all at once, pulling her from her wayward thoughts and for a moment she felt her skin prickle as it had the day she had stood face to face with the gypsy. There was something to his words, something she wasn't quite able to put her finger on in that moment, but it was there nonetheless and eventually, she was certain the clarity of what it was would present itself to her.

"I think…I think I've talked enough for now Stephen. Your turn." she whispered in the dark, surprised to find her eyes filling with tears. She hadn't cried much thus far, in spite of the pain she had experienced in the moments when she had first awoken and even worse the agony of speaking of Sabrina, but his words, full of cryptic meaning had inspired her to tears and as much as she would have liked to brush them away, doing so was impossible.

"Tell me about you." She stated yet again, hearing him sigh a little at this.

"There really isn't much to tell," he assured her and somehow she was having trouble believing this. There was a lot more to Stephen Morgan than met the eye, metaphorically speaking as she had yet to come face to face with him. Her own grief, her own painful past had become something of a rictormeter, it could detect suffering in others, and with him, it had red lined. He had been through a shit storm equal to her own, and somehow he too had managed to weather it.

"Let me be the judge of that," she whispered, hearing him chuckle softly in response.

"Alright, but I warned you."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Stephen Morgan wasn't his real name, or more to the point not his birth name, as in a sense, it had become real to him over the years since he had claimed the moniker for his own. But he had been born Stephen John Brentworth, the only child of Evan and Maria Brentworth.

There hadn't really been all that much about his childhood that was noteworthy or exceptional in truth, he remembered it had been a happy one, for the most part, no real trauma, no truly hard times. The kind of stable and well adjusted rearing that most people long for, which probably explained why he had rebelled against it so very much the moment he had graduated school and went off to college.

"You are out of control Stephen." How many times he had heard that from friends, teachers, and even his own parents in the first few years that he managed to slip the binds of home life. It was as if, for him, freedom was a new drug, one that had immediately hooked him and every day he swallowed it deep and rode the high until he crashed.

"I think that's a pretty common reaction for most kids," Sam interrupted him for a moment and without a thought he turned toward her voice, wishing again that he could see her, look at her, make some sort of eye contact with her.

"Yeah, it probably is. But I can't help but think that with me, that taste of freedom and that need to savor it might have gone a little too far."

He tried everything in his first few years of school, every drug he was offered, every drink he was handed, every experience he could think of or at times, every experience his friends could conceive of. One night wasted to the gills on some liquor one of his buddies had kipped from the local pub, Stephen had climbed to the highest peak of the dormitory roof, took a running start and leapt off. It had been a painful, eye opening moment when he landed, one that nearly cost him his life and sent him to the infirmary for near on three months, but some good had come out of it or at least some good had come from the time following this experience. The time away from his buddies had given him a chance to sober up for the first time since he had crossed the campus beside his mum and dad, and in his sobriety, or more to the point, because of his sobriety he had managed to meet and become acquainted with a shy, brainy type girl named Cecily.

To be honest, she wasn't the type of girl that Stephen normally went for back in those days. Of course back in those days he was looking for a good time, pure and simple, get in, get off, get out, no attachments, that was the motto he and his mates lived by. But having no choice but to be around Cecily for days on end while he was recovering, sticking to this motto proved to be a lot ore difficult then he liked to admit.

"Why on earth would you jump from the roof of your dormitory?" It only stood to reason this would be the first question she asked him, it was the first question everyone asked him, or at least everyone who hadn't been there the night he had decided to make this leap. Hearing these words from her however had been a little like hearing them from his mother, the question left him feeling embarrassed, so much so that for a long time he chose to keep the answer from her knowing if he admitted he was drunk and wasted at the time, she would think less of him then she already did, which really didn't say a whole lot.

"Cecily was the type of girl who went to school for one reason," he said aloud, smiling a little as an image of how she had looked in those days suddenly filled his mind. "She went to get an education, not to party, not to experiment with drugs, not to make friends, just to learn."

"Wow…that must have put a damper on your attraction to her," Sam teased a little, and in spite of himself Stephen smiled at her assessment, not because it wasn't the truth but simply because it was, the exact truth in fact, and eerily so at that.

Stephen spent nearly six weeks with Cecily taking care of him in the infirmary before he was released with a walking cast on his broken leg and a prescription for pain pills that oddly enough, considering his fondness for drugs at the time, he never bothered to fill.

"So…what happened once you were free? Did you go back to partying it up, or did meeting Cecily have an impact on your life?"

"I went back to partying," he admitted with a soft chuckle," but it didn't have the same significance for me it did before my jump."

In fact, too quickly he became completely bored with the entire scene, disgusted by the way he was living, by the opportunities he was squandering.

"So I buckled down, actually started attending the classes I was assigned,"

His friends hadn't much cared for the changes in him. They wanted him to be the good ol' Stephen he had been before his trip off the dormitory roof. It took them a little longer to accept the changes in him, but eventually, they had backed off, went their own way and though he spent a lot of nights alone in his dorm room studying or watching TV, he was surprised to find he was actually happier without the drinking and partying.

"It's a sad day when you reach the end of your rebellion stage and realize that in truth, everything you were rebelling against was everything you genuinely loved."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Sam interjected with humor in her soft voice. "What I want to know, is what happened with Cecily."

"Honestly, nothing happened with Cecily…at least nothing happened right away."

Stephen in fact saw very little of Cecily after he was released from the infirmary. They lived separate lives in more ways than simply the choices they made. She was an honor student, studying to be a doctor, which explained her attachment to the infirmary. When she wasn't taking care of stupid, drunk kids, she was either in class, studying for class, or working one of her three part times jobs.

"She was on a scholarship, part of the requirement for that was she had to help pay for her education."

"I know all about that, that's how I got through college," Sam stated matter of factly.

"Anyway by the time the first semester of school ended, I had actually seen her about three time's total, and that was generally across the campus or something like that. We hadn't spoken, not even a hi and I think for a time I forgot about her."

"You still remember every moment you saw her, though few and far between, that's not forgetting her Stephen, that's falling in love."

"Yeah, I…I suppose so," he heard the volume of his voice lower as he said this and with this came the usual maelstrom of memories surrounding Cecily. More than anything in the world he wanted to just drop the subject skim over it much the way he did in interviews and with anyone who asked about the painful portions of his past. But surprisingly enough he knew he wouldn't let the subject drop, knew he couldn't simply brush it aside. He needed to tell someone, even a faceless stranger who he had only met because of some quirky twist of fate. He had to get it out, now before it was too late, before he never got a chance to put it all into words.

"My second year at college saw a lot of changes. For one thing even if I had wanted to go back to partying, which, incidentally…I hadn't, there wouldn't have been time for it anyway. The classes I was taking were harder, more demanding, more time consuming, not to mention my father had lined me up with a part time job near campus, not because I needed it, but because he thought it would be good for me, plus I'd become involved with the drama department by then, helping out behind the scenes, making sets, typing scripts stuff like that, so…no room for partying, no time for my old friends."

Of course many of his olds friends hadn't returned after the first semester as it turned out. Half of the guys who had been on that dorm roof the night he had taken his leap had either flunked out or had their funding pulled when it became clear to their parents that they weren't college material. When Stephen stopped to think about it, he had never seen any of them again, not in the remaining years of his schooling nor in the life he had since lead which, considering the fame and notoriety he had achieved was actually surprising.

"So, what was the job?" Sam's question interrupted his thoughts, and he sighed softly remembering all too well his first experience in the so called adult work force.

"I was a waiter," he said softly, and immediately she chuckled in response to this seeming to recognize without having to be told how truly crappy and demeaning this line of work was.

"I was a waitress for two years," she said without further explanation

"I hated that job with a passion," he went on to say and she made a sound of mutual sympathy. "I never realized there were so many assholes in the world until I had to be the one to serve them their meals."

"Funny thing huh, you could be a doctor amputating their arm with a rusty saw and they would look at you afterwards and say thank you, but God forbid you should serve them a steak that was cooked medium instead of well done."

"Spoken like someone who has been in the trenches," he quipped hearing her laugh softly in response. For one brief moment his thoughts wandered away from the topic of conversation, and he found himself thinking how much he liked the sound of her laugh. "Anyway as it turned out, the restaurant where I had come to be enslaved was one of the places where Cecily worked. Like me she was hired part time, three nights a week, Monday, Thursday and Saturday, incidentally Saturday nights the place was a mad house, non stop customers. I hated Saturdays."

The first week he had worked with Cecily as his trainer. She said very little as far as personal went, in fact she never even mentioned his time in the infirmary, sticking instead to the subject of the job and nothing more. By the time the second week had come and gone he came to realize that inside the restaurant, just as she had been inside the infirmary, she was focused at all times on her duties, seldom distracted, rarely unprofessional, and certainly never anything other than cool to the point of being stoic.

"Was that it then, the reason you were attracted to her, or at least one of the reasons? I mean you said she was completely different from every other girl you had ever dated, was it because she didn't throw herself at you?"

"I get the feeling there is an insult in that question somewhere," he teased hearing her laugh once more. "But, I'm gonna let it pass and say yeah, that was probably the biggest reason in the beginning. I mean, I wasn't drop dead gorgeous, or some irresistible stud, but I got my share of women and generally without even having to try. Cecily was immune to whatever charms I might have possessed however."

Not only had she been immune, at times it seemed she had been all but oblivious in fact, and Lord but being ignored by her had riled him in ways he had never been riled before.

"Who the hell does she think she is?" He had questioned Stuart, one of his fellow waiters and the first friend he had made that hadn't been of the partying drug taking variety. Unlike much of the people Stephen had become acquainted with in his four years at school, Stuart had remained a part of his life, even to the day of the accident when the two of them had gotten together and had lunch.

"You look a little tired there Stephen, they been working you too hard?" He had asked over Shrimp salad and tea. Cecily's name had never come up in conversation, not once, and that was probably why Stephen had managed to continue seeing Stuart as a friend throughout the years, because he was the only one who knew him well enough not to push him for details.

At the time though, Stuart had been pencil thin, a nervous nineteen year old who could barely talk without stammering, yet another reason Stephen had come to consider him a friend, because hanging with Stuart, who had been scared of his own shadow at times, didn't make Stephen feel pressured in anyway to be anyone other than his real self.

"She…she…she…doesn't date g…g…g guys like you."

"What do you mean guys like me?" Stephen had questioned the boy to his left, all the while never taking his gaze away from the girl who should have been the last thing on his mind but always seemed to be the first.

"She only goes for the b…b…brainy types Stephen, and let's face it, that ain't you."

"Funny how you never stammer over the insults eh Stuart," he had quipped in response. It had been something of a mean thing to say, but he had reached the point where his frustration toward Cecily was getting the better of him, affecting his life in ways he had never once imagined it would.

"Stuart sounds like one of those pull no punches types." Sam commented, drawing him for a moment from his memories and yet again Stephen thought about his dearest friend, his only true friend he was forced to admit.

"He's a lawyer now, non profit. He spends much of his time taking bites out of the asses of big corporations."

"A noble cause," she added with a laugh, falling silent once more, and with a sigh Stephen picked up the story where he had left off, feeling the events rushing through his mind as if they had happened twenty minutes earlier instead of nearly twenty years in the past.

"I guess, in all honesty, I have Stuart's pull no punches tactics to thank for what happened next."

He had gotten angry, angry at his friend for pointing out to him something he had already come to recognize, that Cecily was out of his league, beyond his reach in ways no girl had ever been before. Their paths in life were so different, their dreams so opposed to one another, sanity told him he would only end up hurting himself in the end if he pursued her any further than he already had, which in truth hadn't been all that far , and yet, he couldn't, wouldn't give up upon her.

"Do you like music?" Out of the blue and without so much as a hi he had asked her this that very afternoon while she had been fixing drinks for one of her tables, and the startled look in her blue eyes, eyes that haunted him at times before and since, was priceless to say the least.

"Are…are you talking to me?" She had responded, setting a tray with the tea she had just brewed, never missing a beat.

"Yeah, I was just wondering how you feel about music?"

"UH well…yeah, I like music, everything but that head banging screaming kind."

Unfortunately for Stephen, this was the type he liked, the kind of music that made your ears bleed and your heart pound in rhythm with the drums. He didn't tell her this however, merely nodded his head meeting her gaze as she looked at him almost expectantly. In that moment, the strangest thing happened to him, something that had never happened before and hadn't happened since. He could remember so clearly looking into her eyes, one minute the world around him was full of sights and sounds, dishes clanking, people talking in low murmurs, the piped music overhead playing some tune he had never heard before and was grateful for that fact, and the next, everything faded, simply melted away leaving him and Cecily alone in the world staring into each others eyes.

"I think I fell in love with her right then and there," he said softly, more to himself than to his hidden companion. In the years since he had examined this moment, turned it over and over again inside of his mind, helpless but to recall the way he had felt, the way ever part of him had wanted to step forward and meld with every part of her.

"Was it the same for her?" Sam questioned and he drew back in his mind, feeling the warmth of tears on his cheek.

"Actually," he whispered his voice too thick with emotion. "She told me later, months later in fact that she was certain some part of my brain had gone wonky in that moment. She nearly slapped me, and might have done so had Stuart not dropped a tray of glasses and startled me out of my catatonia."

"Good ol' Stuart to the rescue eh?"

"Yeah," Stephen whispered, and again his thoughts drifted toward Stuart although he wasn't entirely certain why it was his friend was occupying his thoughts so completely in that moment.

"So you asked her out then?"

"No, actually I choked." He admitted with a slight shake of his head that he immediately regretted, a sick sensation filled him on the inside and he had to pause, lay his head in the grass and take several deep breaths to keep himself from succumbing to the need to vomit.

"Stephen." From what seemed a great distance he heard his name being called, and for the briefest moment he was certain it was Cecily doing the calling. He had always loved the sound of his name on her lips, the soft way in which she pronounced it, especially in the moments when they had made love.

"Stephen."

Hastily he lifted his head a little and glanced around at the widening shadows now surrounding the clearing and with a groan he snapped back to reality.

"You awake?" Sam questioned, concern filling her voice and leaving him to wonder for a moment how long he had been out this time. It was getting harder and harder to pull himself back from the darkness, each time he slipped into it he felt it welcoming him more and more, surrounding him, filling him with a sense of peace and calm that he hadn't experienced in his life in sometime.

"Yeah, I'm awake." He told her finally, hearing her sigh in relief.

"Three cars passed while you were out, one slowed but didn't stop. I tried beeping the horn, hoping to catch their attention but it isn't working, the horn I mean."

"You know, it's funny, but this isn't the way I imagined I would die."

He heard a sharp intake of breath from the depths of the overturned rental car and knew his statement had caught her a little off guard. Truth was it had caught him off guard as well as in that moment he hadn't really been contemplating his death though it seemed it had been on his mind, in the darkened recesses of his thoughts, near and getting nearer with every passing moment.

"How did you figure you would go?" She questioned, remaining on the subject though he sensed, and without the benefit of woman's intuition that she wanted very much to stray from the path their conversation had suddenly traveled to.

"Everyone thinks about it at least once in their life, sometimes more than once." He stated closing his eyes for a moment as his vision had blurred a little and the skewing of his surroundings had him again feeling nauseas. "When I was a kid, I was certain that one day Godzilla would take a stroll through London and squish me like a grape inside my house."

"Godzilla," Again that laugh, that soft chuckle that he couldn't help but find appealing. "That's so funny because I used to think the same thing."

"When I was about sixteen," he went on. "I imagined I'd go out like buddy Holly, not so much in a plane crash, but at the top of my game, millions of people would mourn me, cry as they watched my coffin being carried through the streets of London."

"Everyone has that fantasy," she said softly.

"But, as I got older, I stopped glorifying the moment pf my demise. It stopped mattering how or why, and what came to matter most was that I died with as much dignity and grace as I possibly could. Not on my knees praying for just another moment, but on my feet, accepting my fate, embracing it, ready to face whatever came next."

"Is that…is that how Cecily went Stephen?"

She had no idea how much these words affected Stephen, couldn't possibly know, though she might have somehow sensed their affect as she seemed to sense a great deal of others things that thus far no one else ever had. Either way he felt himself flinch, literally flinch, away from the pain her question created, away from the flare from a wound that not even time had managed to heal.

"I didn't ask her out," he stated after several minutes had passed, minutes in which he had somehow managed to put the pin back in the grenade her words had tossed inside of his heart. She didn't repeat them, and in his mind Stephen could almost imagine her getting comfortable once more, or as comfortable as she possibly could, ready to hear more of his tale, yet all the while knowing that eventually, eventually her question would be answered. "Not then at least, and not for nearly a month afterwards."

What he did do in fact, was avoid Cecily for a time, embarrassed by his inability to get past the awkward stage that was always there when two people met and became acquainted. He liked her, wanted to get to know her, wanted to spend every waking moment he had with her, wanted to be alone with her, to kiss her to hold her, and yet it was because of these insistent wants and needs that he backed away from her, shied off, and hid whenever he found himself having to face facing her again.

"Did she notice you were avoiding her?"

"I'd like to say she did," he responded softly and oddly enough he found himself smiling a little. "But, no she didn't at least not at first."

Cecily had once spoken of this moment years later, but in her telling of the whole event, he had come off sounding like a lovesick puppy lowering his tail and skulking away every time she so much as turned an eye in his direction. He hadn't much cared for that assessment, not because it hadn't been accurate, but because it had been too accurate in fact.

"You were so cute," she had whispered, gripping his hand as tightly as she possibly could at the time." and the more nervous I made you, the more cuter you became."

"So what was it then, what made you finally bite the bullet and ask her out?'

It had in fact been Stuart who had made him finally face this moment.

"You're a pussy Stephen, and coming from me, that's really an insult."

He hadn't stuttered once as he said this, had simply thrown this gauntlet down, seeming to know, or at least suspect how he would react to it. Either way it had worked, and that very night, nearly six weeks from the day that he had started working along side Cecily; he had marched up to her in the midst of a Saturday dinner rush and did the deed so to speak.

"Do you want to go out with me or not?"

She had been the one stammering this time, staring at him wide eyed, a flush stealing over her cheeks that had only served to make her look all the more beautiful then he had already come to see she was. Not the classic beauty, not the hot bikini model beauty, but a beauty nonetheless, one that would endure over time, grow even.

"Do you really think now is the best time to ask me that question?" She had responded once she finally found her voice, stepping past him and setting the plates she had been carrying on the table behind him. There had been six people at this particular booth, at the time he had considered them old, but looking back he realized they had truthfully been about the age he was now. Three men, three woman, paired up, and they had been watching the exchange between himself and Cecily with amusement and perhaps a little fondness, almost as if it had reminded them a little of their own youth.

"Look, if I don't ask you now, I might never get up the nerve to do it at all. So, what do you say, will you got out with me?"

"Yeah." That was all she said, without needing to think about it, without needing to consider the idea. "But only on three conditions."

"What are they?" He had asked her, no longer angry in the least, suddenly a little light headed and slightly dizzied by how easy it had been to do what he had been dreading over for so long.

"First, you get a haircut." He lifted his hand to his head as she said this, trying to remember the last time he had his hair so much as trimmed. It wasn't long really, in fact his hair grew in such a way that it defied ever getting long, it simply got shaggy, full and shaggy until it looked as if he were donning a large, blonde helmet of sorts.

"Done, what else?"

She ignored him for a moment, slipping the plates from her arms onto the table and walking away, not continuing until they were back at the wait station and in a more private setting.

"Second, you have to wear a suit, and I mean a real suit, not dress trousers and a sport coat, an honest to goodness suit, with a tie and everything."

This would be a little more difficult, as it meant he would actually have to go out and purchase one. Everything he owned, every piece of clothing in his possession save for those he wore to work, were made of denim or were t shirts. He hadn't worn a suit since graduation and there had bee very little left to salvage of that one after he and his friends had finished celebrating their first moments as adults so to speak.

"Fine, I'll get a suit."

"And lastly," she stated crossing her arms and fixing him with those too blue eyes of hers. "I get to decide where we go, and I don't mean on every date we ever have, I just mean this first one, it has to be my choice."

"You aren't planning on taking me out somewhere secluded and killing me are you?" He had joked, surprised to see her actually laugh in response to these words as he had scarcely ever seen her smile let alone chuckle.

"Not until the second date."

"It's always the quiet ones," Sam stated all at once and he glanced in her general direction waiting for her to elaborate on this statement." You said she was quiet, studious, the brainy type. I'm betting, just from that one line, that once you got to know her a little she was anything but quiet or subdued."

"You win that bet," Stephen responded with a smile. His mind wandered again, images of Cecily filling it as it traveled paths he was certain he had erased from his memories a long, long time earlier. There was so much about Cecily he had tried to forget, wanted desperately to bury away as it made it easier not to think about her than it did to remember and feel the ache of her absence that always went along with this.

"So where'd she take you?" Sam interjected once more, as always seeming to ask the right question at the right time in order to pull him back from his own depressing thoughts.

"She took me to meet her parents."

"Uh…are you serious?"

"That was exactly my reaction." He said with a chuckle.

Had Cecily told him that night as she met him outside his dorm that he was going to meet what essentially would become his family years later, he was certain he would have turned tail and ran. No guy, especially a guy who spent the first year of college getting wasted and jumping of dorm roofs is ready for that kind of pressurized moment. But she hadn't told him, hadn't so much as hinted at their destination as the two of them climbed into her car and drove off into the night.

Stephen could recall the ride however, right down to the song that was playing on the radio, it had been an American tune, Foreigner, Waiting for a girl like you, and to say it had been the perfect diddy would have been an understatement. It seemed to fit the moment to a tee.

"Why are you staring at me?" Cecily had asked him after the first five minutes of the trip had passed in utter silence and though he had been slightly embarrassed to be caught doing so, he wasn't able to stop himself from doing just that, staring at her.

"I think I felt it then, more so than ever before…"

"Felt what?" Sam asked him softly.

"That feeling of something being so right, so perfect, so inevitable that it's almost scary."

He was feeling all that and more as his gaze remained upon her, watching the glow of the streetlights they passed beneath fade and return, playing across her face, alternating with the shadows that only enhanced her beauty all the more.

"If someone had told me when I was sixteen, that I would find the other half of my heart but three years later, I would have never believed them, would have laughed in their faces as a matter of fact," he stated into the night. "But there I was, six months shy of my twentieth birthday, the rest of my life stretched out before me, and already I knew what I wanted to do with it, how I wanted to spend it."

To this Sam said nothing, and for that Stephen was eternally grateful as his heartfelt outpouring of words had been so sincere, so deeply felt that they had left him a little shaken and on the verge of tears yet again.

"So anyway," he continued, drawing in a deep breath that oddly enough made him feel a little dizzied yet again. "Her family lived but six blocks away from the school, which explained why she didn't live at the dorms. They had a third floor walk up, not much to look at as most flats in the city aren't, but they managed to make it feel warm and homey. I liked her mum and dad from the first."

They hadn't really been all that difficult to like in fact; her dad was a friendly, talkative man, highly animated in his conversations and quick with a smile and a laugh. Her mother had been a tad bit more subdued, but as the night had passed she began to open up, letting down her guard a little, enough for Stephen to catch a glimpse as to how Cecily might be once they got past the first date.

"I had a really nice time," he had stated once they were back in the car and making the return trip to the dorms and at his words Cecily had pulled the car to the side of the road, turned it off and merely sat there for a moment staring out the window into the darkness.

"I…I brought you to meet my parents for a reason Stephen, can you guess why?"

"I don't know, maybe to create an alibi for yourself so that on our second date, you can take me out and kill me and no one will ever suspect it was you."

This time his joke hadn't even elicited a faint trace of a grin. Cecily had gone completely serious. She had turned to him, her blue eyes full of sincerity, contemplation, and perhaps even a little fear though at the time he had no idea what might have prompted that, her fear.

"I like you Stephen; I like you a lot in fact. I brought you to meet my parents because I wanted you to see and know who I really am, and what sort of background it is I come from."

He had opened his mouth to speak and she had shushed him firmly. Stephen had often wondered about that moment, how it might have ended if he had said what he had been thinking right then and there. He had been about to tell her he didn't care where she came from, didn't care if she was rich or poor or whatever, that he still…

"Loved her," Sam offered up the words that he himself had had difficulty voicing and he lowered his head once more sighing softly.

"Yeah, loved her." he echoed. "But she hadn't been referring to where she lived, what her family had or didn't have."

"She was talking about the relationship between her parents and subsequently with her as well." Sam stated and he was astounded to hear that she had managed to pick up on this fact much quicker than even he had been at the time. He in fact had been completely confused by Cecily's words, at a loss to understand where it was she was going with her statements.

"I guess, I always took it for granted before I met her, the closeness between myself and my parents, the closeness they shared with each other. It just seemed…I don't know…mundane, unimportant. I mean, you don't really look at your parents and go, wow, they are so much in love with one another, that's how I want my life to be."

"That's because it's generally taken for granted isn't it? We just assume that because they are older, because they had been together so long, because of the life they built and the children they created that they are only together because they pretty much have to be by that point."

"Exactly my thought." He said with a laugh. "But Cecily didn't see it that way, she saw past it all and saw not two people sharing a life because it was expected of them, but two people sharing a life because they wanted to, truly wanted to."

"And that was the way she wanted it to be for her."

"Yeah."

"You must have been scared to death." She went on to say and he nearly choked at her words. In spite of the fact that thus far his fellow crash victim had seemed to know or at the very least accurately guess his thoughts and feelings, hearing her make this prediction was a little eerie in truth. He had been scared, so scared he had spent the rest of the night awake in his bed staring at the ceiling wondering what the hell he had gotten himself into.

"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you avoided her for awhile after that."

"I did," he admitted even more astonished to hear Sam say this. "I ran like hell as a matter of fact."

"She didn't chase you though, just let you run didn't she?"

"How could you possibly have guessed that?" Stephen asked, wondering absently to himself if he was really that transparent or if Sam was merely that in tune with him.

"Most guys would have ran," she explained, shifting a little, this he knew only because he heard the squeak as the rental car was jostled a bit then resettled back into It's squashed bug position. "And any self respecting woman would have let them go, let them have the time they needed to come to grips with themselves. Of course not all men would have so kudos for you on that."

Stephen couldn't help but think of the reason why he finally stopped running and faced up to not only Cecily, but himself as well, his feeling for her, those she created inside of him.

"I think, in the end, what it all came down to, was that I was more afraid of spending my life without her than I was of spending it with her, you know what I mean?" He questioned aloud and for the first time since he had begun his tale, Sam had no response, in fact from the rental there was absolute silence and the longer it stretched out, the more concerned he began to grow.

"Sam," he called to her softly at first and when this elicited no response with much more urgency. "Sam!"

Again without a thought as to what he was doing, Stephen began to push forward, dragging himself through the grass, pausing only when he felt as if his head might explode from the effort as well as from the pain.

"Sam," he said once more, nearly crying with relief as he heard a groan in response.

"How…how long was I out?" She asked after a few more seconds and he lay his head upon the grass, breathing hard, his heart pounding painfully in his chest, but not simply because of the exertion of pulling himself closer to the car, also because the thought of her not being fine, slipping away from the moment, leaving him alone had filled him with dread and heartbreak.

"Long enough," he whispered back, a little surprised to hear her chuckle lightly in response.

"Sorry, I promise it wasn't boredom."

"Are you alright now?" He asked, ignoring her attempt at humor for the time being.

"Right as rain," she stated and as if on cue the sky above opened up and let loose upon the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

With every event that had not been predicted or foreseen, the fact that it would rain should have been the one certainty. After all, it was England and statistically the British Island received more rain per year than nearly any other place. But Sam hadn't been expecting it and when it began when the first few drops hit the shattered windshield before her. She wasn't thinking about statistics or norms for that matter, she was thinking about Stephen, exposed to the elements, unable to move enough to find cover and how the weather might complicate things for him.

"It's just a little rain," he told her. "Actually, it feels pretty good."

"Yeah well, it won't in about ten minutes when it stops and you are laying there soaked." She chided him, momentarily distracted from her thoughts by the sound of him laughing.

"You sound like my mum now." He explained. "Don't go out in the rain without rubbers on," he went on to say in a high pitched mock rendition of his mother she supposed. "Always carry a slicker, eat your peas, don't run with scissors, always…always wear your seatbelt."

His voice drifted off at this, yet as it faded she was certain she heard a catch, and even more certain that that catch meant his guilt had got the better of him again and he was once more crying.

"All moms are the same Stephen, no matter what country they come from." She quickly assured him, talking now not because she truly had something to say, but simply because she wanted to distract him, to draw him out of his sadness before he reached the point where giving in to it seemed far easier than dealing with it head on.

"Yeah, I suppose," she heard him mumble softly over the sound of the falling rain.

"My mom didn't want me to come on this trip you know," she stated and without needing to see him do so she felt his attention turn ever so slightly in her direction. "She…she said it was a fool's venture, that I was better off just letting the lawyers hammer everything out with my Grandfather's inheritance and simply remaining at home."

"You think she knew, or at least had some sort of intuition that something bad was going to happen?" He asked and in spite of herself Sam smiled, helpless but to wonder if before the moment of their meeting had Stephen put any stock in intuition of precognition at all.

"Nah, I think it was more along the lines of her wanting to keep me where she could see me, call me everyday, drop by and make sure I was as fine as I kept telling her I was. My Mother is a bit of a worrier."

"Not that she had anything to worry about when it came to you, right?' He was teasing her a little which in her mind was a good sign. "So I gather she tried to talk you out of this whole journey then huh."

"She tried talking, guilt, all the tricks in a mother's arsenal."

"And yet you still came, why?"

For a long time Sam remained silent, mulling this over, trying to recall in retrospect the precise reason she had come. The details were a little fuzzy at the moment, but she didn't need them anyway, she knew in truth what had prompted her to defy her mother's tactics and make the trip nonetheless.

"I haven't dated since Carl." she stated softly, giving birth to these words before she even had a clear idea of where it was she was going with this particular line of conversation. "I had chances, a few of them at least. I'd like to say there were lots and lots of chances, but…."

She had in fact been asked out on three separate occasions, twice by the same determined guy who after being shot down the second time decided that was more than enough rejection for him. It wasn't that he or the one other guy who had worked up the nerve to invite her out were not good looking or in anyway unpersonable, it just wasn't something she felt up to any more, the whole dating thing.

"I guess I just got lazy if you want to know the truth," she admitted aloud and admitted was the right word as until that moment she hadn't even come close to revealing this truth to herself let alone anyone else.

"Lazy, or scared?' It was Stephen's turn to try his hand at being intuitive and a smile crossed her lips that faded all too quickly as she was forced to make yet another realization, she had indeed been scared as well.

"How do you say kiss my ass in proper English?" She questioned hearing him chuckle at this but remain silent. "I guess I was scared as well," suddenly Sam found herself hesitating in her words, not wanting to delve deeper and examine them closer. "It's a scary thing when you get to be 38 and you're all alone, and everyone you have cared about, or so it seems at times, has left you in one way or another."

"Do you….blame yourself Sam, for Carl…for Sabrina?"

It would have been much easier to just ignore the question all together, and the instant it was posed Sam thought about doing just that, skimming over it the way Stephen had skimmed over some of her more probing questions. But something wouldn't allow her to do that, not then, not in that moment, and with a sigh that she immediately regretted, she closed her eyes for a moment and thought about her daughter, thought about Carl, even found herself musing a little about Dan though she wasn't entirely certain as to why that was.

"Medically I know there was nothing I could have done for my daughter," she began to speak, opening her eyes once more and focusing her attention on the lines of rain water making broken paths across the windshield. "I mean, even had I…even had I spent every moment, of every day, sitting in the emergency room prepared for what happened, there is a better than likely chance she still could not have been saved, that's…that's how quickly she was taken."

"But you blame yourself nonetheless." He continued to prod her and a burst of pent up grief exploded from her lips, along with but one word, one word that said entirely too much.

"Yes."

She had held her daughter, so tiny, so frail, the moment she had entered the world, the instant she had drawn her first breath and opened her eyes to the possibilities that surrounded her. It was a moment she would never forget, an instant forever tattooed in her memories. Right next to it, or perhaps superimposed over it, was the instant that Sabrina had been taken away from that same world, those same possibilities. Sam had been holding her then as well, holding her tight, begging God, Jesus, anyone who would listen to just give her for a little more time, just a little more time to share the life of the precious angel before her.

"No one listened," she whispered shakily, brushing at her eyes with hands that had begun to tremble, not from the cold, not from the shock of her injuries, but from the aching, open wound that she had been certain had begun to heal, but still felt as raw and festering as ever.

"How did Carl…I mean…how did he…?"

"He slit his wrists." She said bluntly, drawing away from thoughts of Sabrina for a moment and gratefully doing so. At some point, Sam knew the entire story would come out, every heartbreaking moment of what it was like to watch her child die in her arms, but she was reprieved briefly from having to put it into words and suddenly in comparison, talking about Carl was a lot easier.

Thankfully, she hadn't been the one to find him. She had in fact been at work the day it happened or at least the day his body had been discovered by the super of his apartment building.

"He did it in a tub of running water, by the time anyone noticed the leaking, he was long gone."

"Did he…leave a note, bother to explain at all?'

"He did leave a note, but I didn't get it until three days later. He...mailed it to me."

"Oh my God." She heard Stephen whisper, obviously able to imagine how it might have felt for her to receive this message just when the reality of the entire situation had begun to sink in.

"He apologized, several times in fact. Told me his demons had just gotten too strong for him to wrestle with any longer, and then…he thanked me."

"For giving me a few moments of happiness in a life that has been anything but happy." Those were his exact words, memorized in the many times that Sam had read and reread his final message in the days following his death.

"So after him, I just…accepted that I was gonna be alone, destined to be alone or so it seemed."

"Until Madame Zoltar told you otherwise."

"Let me clarify something here for you Stephen," Sam stated softly. "Madame Zoltar never said anything about love or hope, or the possibility of finding my happy ever after, all she said was my destiny awaited me elsewhere…and I guess, after finding and losing it several times over, I decided it was time to meet it head on."

The instant she said this, the instant her own words registered inside of her mind Sam began to laugh, not just a chuckle, but a full blown laugh that she couldn't control or stop though she wanted very much to do both. It wasn't until she paused long enough to catch her breath that she heard Stephen laughing as well, hoarsely, not quite as deeply, but laughing nonetheless.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, the instant she managed to quell her humor and this happened only because at some point Stephen had gone from laughing to coughing and each wheeze had come to sound wet, loose and painful.

"It's alright," he assured her sounding a little breathless and whole lot weaker. "I'm gonna close my eyes for a moment, don't…don't panic over it."

His moment turned out to be thirty minutes, and this she knew only because she counted each second off in her head, fearful that he wouldn't come back this time, that his injuries would get the better of him and he'd slip away leaving her to face her own mortality aloe.

"Did I miss anything?"

"The Queen dropped by while you were out, said she'd come back later," Sam heard herself joking when what was really going through her mind was an overwhelming sense of relief at the sound of his voice.

"You know, I am really looking forward to the moment you and I stand face to face. I can't wait to put an image with those bad jokes."

"Bad, they aren't bad; you are just suffering from poor British humor." She was crying, not certain why, but crying nonetheless.

"Tell me something else about you Sam, not something sad, not something depressing, a good memory. Do you…have any?"

"I have a few," she retorted, surprised to find it was much easier to come up with sad and depressing than it was to recall moments of joy.

"I had a puppy once, his name was Gabe…oh but he got hit by a car six months after I got him, so…."

"You said before you were Sam to everyone else but Dan…what did you mean by that?" She was momentarily thrilled that not only had he been listening to her speak, truly listening, but that her words had endured through several bouts of unconsciousness and the coming of the rain, which had yet to depart.

"I used to be a tomboy growing up."

"What's that mean, a tomboy?"

"Well let's just say if I had been given the choice of taking ballet lessons or playing little league baseball, I would have chosen baseball and in fact did."

"Oh, I get it now." He stated softly.

"Anyway that was me, a tom boy in every sense of the word."

Her father had wanted a boy, she wasn't sure when it was in her life she had heard this, but it had stuck itself inside of her mind, the notion that in spite of his love for her, in spite of his devotion and as far as Father's went he was both extremely loving and devoted, that some part of him regretted that he had never had a son. Not so much regretted her, but regretted that she had been the only child that he had helped to create.

"All fathers yearn for sons; it's just part of their genetic need to pass on the line."

"Yeah, that's true I suppose." Sam responded to Stephen's interruption, sensing that he was talking as a need to contribute to the conversation but simply to make her aware that he was still awake.

"Anyway, I was what he got, like it or not, and as my mother puts it, right from the word go I became the son my father could never and would never have in nearly every possibly conceivable way."

Little league was actually only part of the whole tomboy phase that Sam went through. She had refused to wear dresses, refused to have her hair in anyway other than short and unstyled.

"It lasted right up until the time I entered high school, and by then dressing down and hanging with the boys had become so much a part of who I was that I had no idea of how to be any other way."

"Until Carl."

"Until Carl, "she echoed his words in response, nodding her head slightly though it seemed a little dumb to do so as he couldn't see her. "I met him, officially met him as in introductions and such when I was sixteen, but the truth is, I knew Carl a long time before then, three years in fact."

Carl Damon Scott was the first boy Sam ever fell for. Before him there had been no one, not even a crush and in the time since she had come to realize that was probably why letting him go, even after the loss of Sabrina, had been so hard for her.

"Some people have this long list of all the times they gave they heart away, to them falling in love is as natural as breathing, but for me…for me it was a little like drowning. I mean, some part of me knew I was being pulled under, could feel the current, the rush of impending demise, but I seemed to recognize fighting it was impossible and eventually just gave into it."

He never noticed her, and in truth she couldn't blame him for this as she went out of her away to remain hidden, never calling attention to herself for any reason, never doing anything that might make her stand out in a crowd.

"You spent three years pining for him?" Stephen asked though it seemed less like a question and more like an expression of pity.

"Oh no,no,no,no…you don't get to comment on that Mr. jump-off-the-dorm-roof-for-the-hell-of-it." She responded and he immediately made a noise of derision but fell silent. "I was just a kid remember, a kid who had spent her entire life trying to be someone she never could be, so…I at least have some sort of excuse for my actions. You have none except that you were drunk."

But there was more to it than that, somehow Sam sensed it, had felt it when Stephen was talking about it. It would come out, eventually, much like her tale about Sabrina, but for the moment she let it slide turning her thoughts back once more to the story she was telling.

"Anyway by the time I turned sixteen I was pretty much fed up with the whole being one of the guy's thing. You probably don't realize it, being a man yourself, but most males are egotistical, self centered, sex obsessed pigs at times."

"I plead the fifth on that," he quipped and she chuckled a little at this.

"I guess I knew by then that I was ever gonna really be the son my father wanted and the truth be told at that point it seemed I was the only one who really cared any more. My father loved me, me, not the me I tried to be, but the me I was. It just took me longer to figure that out then it did him."

"Your father…he's still…"

"Alive? Yes he is, and even to this day when I visit him and my mom I sometimes revert to old habits and he and I will sneak out to the backyard and toss a baseball around. Now it's become something of a tradition, a way for us to have a private moment so we can talk." He didn't comment on this, and in his silence she could almost feel a sense of longing for something. She thought to ask him about his own parents, but decided to leave it alone for the moment.

"So, there I was sixteen, fully blossomed, if you get my meaning, totally in love with a guy who didn't even know I existed, and completely at a loss as to what to do about any of these things."

"You didn't have any girlfriends?" He questioned her and again she sighed, wishing once more she hadn't as an ache had begun in her side, down deep, not really a pain more like a cramping sensation and every deep breath seemed to make it all the more intense.

"Yeah, I had a couple…sort of."

"What do you mean sort of?" Sam could scarcely focus on his words for a moment as the ache had become a full blown stabbing sensation radiating from the depths of her being and sending chills throughout her entire body. "Sam?"

"Wait, just wait." She urged him to silence, closing her eyes and riding the wave of pain, grateful when it finally began to ebb off leaving her shaking and sweating in spite of the chill of the night.

"What…what was that?"

"It was nothing, just…just a little flare of pain is all."

"A little, sounded more like you were giving birth to an elephant." She hadn't even realized she had been making any noise, had been certain she was silent in her pain. "Sam, I need to know the extent of your injuries. IS it…is it serious?"

"Honestly…" Thus far she had pretty much kept the details of her state a secret, dealing with the hurt, the constant blood, the odd twitches and flares, not because she had wanted to, but because some part of her knew if she told Stephen how bad off she truly was, he would do something extreme, perhaps a little too extreme, and considering his own damage that was the last thing she wanted. "I don't know Stephen.." she finally whispered, knowing this was the closest she was going to come for the time being to telling him the truth.

"I have a cell phone somewhere in my car, if I could…"

"Stephen, don't alright. I'm fine for right now I think, don't…don't forget you're wounded too."

For several long moments neither of them spoke and in that silence, broken only by the continuing sound of the rain and the occasional gust of wind, Sam found herself thinking for the first time since she woke to discover herself upside down in her rental car, that maybe, just maybe this would be her moment, the instance of her own mortality.

Dying seemed as much a part of her world as living did sometimes. Everywhere she turned the traces of that forever darkness touched some part of her existence, and yet giving in to it herself, truly facing it, had never really been something she dwelled on for long, until right then and there.

"I had one friend if you want to know the truth," she began to speak once more, not because she wanted to, but because she needed to in order to pull herself back, to drag her thoughts away from what might yet be inevitable. "Her name was Cindy, she was a year older than me and one of those girls who always seemed to know the right thing to say, the right look, the right gesture to make any and every boy around them simply melt."

"I'm not gonna let you die," Stephen vowed, interrupting her though she ignored his words, ignored the sound of tears in his voice.

"Cindy and I grew up together, spent our whole lives living like two houses away from one another, and the year I turned sixteen she decided to make me her sort of…pet project is the only way I can really explain it."

"Sam…" There was so much in that one word, so much emotion, so much expression, far more than Sam wanted to hear or could bring herself to address in that instant.

"Shut up Stephen…just…shut up, please." It took everything in her to hold back her own tears, to suppress them, bury them deep. If she cried, gave in to the tears, she wouldn't stop this time, wouldn't be able to regain control of herself once more.

"There…there was this dance, sort of an informal formal kind of thing, the girls wore dresses, the guys wore slacks and ties, nothing too fancy. Anyway Cindy decided that would be the night of my big transformation, kind of like a coming out party."

"It'll be great, we'll get you a dress, some heels, do your hair and makeup. Once I'm done with you, Dan won't be able to keep his eyes off you, or his hands for that matter." Cindy had vowed, and though Sam had been beside herself with nervous trepidation, she had gone along with the whole thing, allowing Cindy to drag her to the mall, pick out her dress, her shoes, the whole nine yards.

"So the night of the dance Cindy comes over, does her whole little magic trick, and I gotta tell you, in spite of being sick to my stomach with fear, I couldn't help but think she did a great job. I mean I wasn't a super model or anything, not drop dead gorgeous, but…I looked nice, nicer than I ever imagined I could possibly look."

"What did your dad say?" Stephen asked softly, that tone was still there, buried beneath his words, the same tone he had used moments earlier when he had spoken her name, but he was doing his best to mask it, and for that she was grateful.

"My dad cried."

Sam had never once seen her father shed a tear. He was a tough guy, a real man's man as he liked to call himself, and yet that night as she made her big entrance down the staircase he looked up at her with eyes glistening and pride so evident that she was a little startled by the fact that she had never noticed it before.

"Like I said, my father loved me for me, I was just a little slow to realize that."

She wouldn't see her father like this again, not until the day they laid Sabrina to rest, only then the break in him would be so brutal and so violent that it would hurt her almost as badly as the loss of her child had.

"I ended up playing third wheel that night. Cindy's date picked the both of us up and by the time we actually made it to the dance, it was about halfway over. Trevor, Cindy's boyfriend had this real piece of shit car, it stalled out every time we stopped for a red light, so we spent nearly an hour driving six blocks."

"Sounds like the car I had in high school," Stephen said with a small laugh.

" So we walk in, the place is packed, music blaring, people dancing. I wasn't expecting it to be one of those movie moments, you know the kind where everyone stops , the entire place gets silent and as a one all eyes turn in the direction of the leading lady. Good thing too, because that's now how it went down, though I did get a few looks, a couple of open jaw expressions."

"What about Dan, was he there?"

"Oh he was there alright. He had come with Allison Parker, head cheerleader, dumb blonde extraordinaire, knock out body, nothing upstairs."

"I know the type…vividly know the type," this time the laugh that followed was low and a little on the evil side and in spite of herself Sam chuckled as well.

"Yeah, all guys know that type. It's what they look for in a woman until they realize spending forever with a set of talking tits who's idea of deep conversation revolves around the underwear type of their favorite supermodel is not the kind of life they truly want."

"Ouch, yet another dig at my fellow man."

"Dan never even noticed I was there," she said next, pausing to remember the heartbreak of that night. At sixteen it felt as if her entire world had come crashing in around her. She wanted to die, but not in the true sense of the word, die in the way only a sixteen year old girl with a broken heart could.

"But I thought you said you actually met him, with introductions and all."

"I did."

While Sam had been sulking, fighting the urge to cry, Cindy had been stewing, not just because her friend was hurt, but also because she had put everything into Sam's makeover and in the end it hadn't been enough or so it seemed.

"Oh no, it ain't gonna end like this," Cindy had told her as the final song of the night began to play. There'd been no fighting her, no pulling herself free as the girl had grabbed Sam by her wrist and all but dragged her across the dance floor, pushing aside love struck couples , ignoring their comments and glares.

"Dan Scott, this is Samantha Reynolds, Samantha Reynolds Dan Scott."

"It was the single most embarrassing moment of my life up until that point," Sam stated aloud, surprised to find herself smiling fondly at the memory, though at the time she had been certain she would never, in a million years reach the point where she would look back and laugh at her own humiliation.

"So, was it love at first sight for him?"

"Is it ever?" She responded, still smiling.

"No…I don't suppose it is."

"It wasn't love at first sight, and by the time Cindy and Trevor dropped me off back at my house I was ready to pack my stuff and disappear forever. The idea of going to school on Monday and having to face Dan again…well let's just say I spent the entire weekend praying for an earthquake or a tornado, even a blizzard, anything that would delay that moment fro ever coming to be."

But Monday came, a bright beautiful Monday that made Sam a little sick at first sight of the sun shining and the birds singing.

"I went to school though I tried to feign being sick. My mom could smell bullshit from a mile away and wasn't buying my sore throat story. So off I went, pre dance Sam, hoping to find the little slice of oblivion I had once detested and now suddenly longed for."

It was third period, gym class when she finally saw Dan for the first time though he didn't appear to notice her, didn't even so much as look in her direction. By the time the class was over Sam was beginning to hope that all would be forgotten, that she had successfully slipped back into the shadows and would be again overlooked as before.

"I didn't get the chance to tell you how nice you looked."

But it hadn't happened like that. Dan had been waiting outside the girl's locker room when she emerged and the instant he said these words, she burst into tears and ran away from him.

"That explains how you know so much about running," Stephen quipped lightly.

"Yeah, but there's a difference you see. When a guy runs, he does it out of fear, when a girl runs, she does it because…"

"She wants the guy to chase her," he said with a smile in his voice.

"Exactly."

"So did it work, did he chase you?"

He did chase her, but not that day, that day she hid herself inside the girl's bathroom, remaining there until the final bell at which time she skulked home, hid herself away in her room, refusing dinner, refusing to talk even when her mom came poking around to check on her.

"It was like two weeks later when Dan finally approached me again. Only that time, I didn't run."

She had been in art class, hunched over a crappy painting that would have made Carl faint at the sight of it. She was never gonna be a Van Gogh, something she accepted at an early age and wasn't in the least depressed abut.

"So…like I said, I never got the chance to tell you that night of the dance how nice you looked." Sam had frozen at the sound of Dan's voice, all the more so as he seated himself across from her. For several, long, excruciating minutes she had stared down at the watercolor she was working on trying to think of something clever to say, some look or gesture or response that Cindy might have given, but nothing would come and the end she merely lifted her eyes to him.

"Thanks."

"So how come it took so long for the two of us to meet?"

"What are you talking about?" She had asked him, a little surprised by his question, even more surprised as he suddenly smiled in her direction, not past her, not at someone else, but a smile for her and her alone.

"Well we've gone to school together since we were in kindergarten, we played little league five years together, we have like three classes together just this year and yet this is the first time we have ever really spoken, why is that?"

"Well…I guess that's because guys like you don't notice girls like me."

"You did not say that to him," Stephen interjected and Sam shook her head a little helpless but to smile once more.

"I did."

"And how did he react?"

"Honestly, not at all the way I had expected him to."

Dan had in fact gotten a little angry when she said this.

"What do you mean guys like me?" He'd asked in response to this.

"I mean guys like you, popular, good looking, football players, you know…guys like you."

"Brutal." Stephen stated. "You might just as well have called him a shallow, egotistical sexist pig."

"Shut up, I was sixteen remember, and as far as I was concerned all guys were shallow, egotistical, sexist pigs and that opinion was based on years of being part of their groups rather than an outsider."

"Fair enough," he acquiesced. "So there you were, hunched over your crappy painting, you had just completely insulted the guy you had been crushing on since forever, what happened next?"

"He…kissed me."

It was funny in a way, but of the million times Sam had been kissed since that moment, half of which were from Dan and were far more passionate and loving, that was the kiss she remembered with the most fondness, that first awkward stumbling moment that there lips had met..

"I know Stephen, how you felt with Cecily, that moment when you realized that was how you wanted to spend the rest of your life, with her, because that's how I felt with Dan that day, like forever belonged to us."

"I don't think….I put it quite so eloquently however."

"He never called me Sam though. It was always Samantha, not because he needed to differentiate himself from everyone else in my life, simply because he wanted me to know that no matter how I dressed or acted or walked or talked, I was always…I was always going to hold a special place in his heart."

"Does he still call you that?"

"I haven't really spoken to Dan in a little while, like I said, he remarried, has a whole new life that doesn't include me."

It wasn't the truth, at least not entirely the truth, but there were some things that she could not, would not bring herself to share even with Stephen who had very quickly gone from a faceless stranger to the confidante she had never had and never realized she needed.

The true truth was, she had seen Dan not more than two days before she had left for London. It had been a chance encounter, unplanned, unexpected, and at first unwanted as well.

"I hear you're going on vacation." As always, when two people meet years and painful moments away from their first encounter, they exchanged the cursory small talk. He told her about Allison and the kids, she told him about her upcoming trip, they sipped coffee and pretended for a time that they hadn't shared a marriage and the life and death of their daughter. But it was there between them, not just the painful obvious truths, but the hidden, special ones as well, truths that time simply wouldn't allow them to erase.

"I…I almost called you a few weeks back." He had told her, his second cup of Arabica going cold as he leaned his elbows on the table and fixed her with that same warm look he used to give her over breakfast when the two of them had first been married. Then it had made her feel all soft inside, now it simply served to remind her of all the twists and turns on life's highway, ones she never would have predicted and was unable to avoid.

"Why?"

"I was…going through some boxes, stuff that I never unpacked when Alison and I bought the house. Most of them were old clothes, knick knacks from my apartment, shit like that." He was struggling, she could see it, struggling to remember that they were separate people, leading separate lives. "Anyway I found some pictures, snaps we took that first year we were together, or the first year we were married rather. I…I almost forgot what a dump our apartment was back then you remember."

"I remember."

Somehow, though in retrospect she could never quite figure it out, they ended up back at her place and for what seemed like an eternity, they stopped being the people they had become and went back to the people they had been, the people they should have been, could have been had tragedy never robbed them of those identities.

Sam let the memories of that day fade, simply let them slip away little by little, returning to the present, to the sound of falling rain, the grinding pain in her side, the numbness in her legs and the sense of impending doom that now seemed a constant rather than a momentary intrusion.

"You…alright Sam?" Stephen asked, drawing her even further from her thoughts and she turned toward the sound of his voice.

"Yeah, right as rain," she whispered.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Neither one of them had spoken for a time, nearly twenty minutes as far as Stephen could figure, though it wasn't an uncomfortable silence nor a frightening one either, it was the silence of two people dealing with harsh realities, both past and present, in their own way.

"Cecily, died from cancer," he stated all at once, surprising himself a little by the fact that he didn't stumble over the word as he normally did.

"No you don't, you don't get to skip to the end just like that Stephen," Sam immediately called him on this however, and with a sigh he lifted his head and looked toward the shadowed rental car.

"I'm not skipping anything. I'm just…I thought I would get the hard part over first, before I told the rest."

"And you really believe that's the hard part?"

For several seconds he couldn't bring himself to answer this question, a little surprised that she had asked it at all and even more surprised by the sudden flare of anger that erupted inside of him as he had been all but certain he had gotten over his rage years earlier.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to this day to say that word?" He asked her through gritted teeth, doing his best to keep control while at the same time wanting to rant and rave to her, to the heavens, to anyone who would listen about the injustice of losing the woman he loved.

"Yeah Stephen, I do." Sam didn't react to his anger, she in fact seemed oblivious to it, though he had the feeling this was a forced oblivion and not a lack of recognition on her part. "I also know that once the worst happens, it isn't the end that's hard to face, it's the memories, the moments they were here that are the truly difficult things to dwell on."

"Oh what are you talking about?" He snapped, hearing her sigh softly in response.

"Sabrina died as well Stephen. I can say that because I had no choice but to face it, accept it, deal with that truth. But by God, don't ask me about her fifth birthday party or her first day of school or her first visit from the tooth fairy. I buried those memories, and dredging them up and bringing them into the light is harder than telling people she was buried with her favorite stuffed hippo."

By the time she was finished saying this her voice had risen a little, matching Stephen's anger with a healthy dose of her own and the silence that followed was a complete silence this time, one in which he could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart and Sam's labored breathing as she worked to regain control of herself and her own emotions.

"Cecily and I got married about six months after the night I met her parents for the first time," Stephen stated after a short time had passed, long enough for both of them to calm themselves, long enough for Sam's words and their meaning to settle in.

"Six months? You didn't waste any time did you?"

"I figured I had wasted enough time just …working up the nerve to ask her out. I didn't want anymore to be lost waiting for our life together to begin."

And just like that the storm passed, both the real one and the one fueled by emotions that both of them had suppressed for far too long or so it seemed. As the last few drops of rain fell Stephen settled himself once more in the wet grass and prepared as best he could for facing Cecily again, the Cecily that had stolen his heart and blinded him to every other woman in the world.

"Her parents were thrilled. I think they realized she wouldn't have made the decision to get married on a whim. She wasn't like that. Everything she did was considered, thought and rethought and when we told them our plans, they didn't try to talk her out of it they merely hugged her and told her how happy they were."

"I get the feeling it wasn't the same for your parents however."

"Yeah…no… not even close."

His mum had cried, literally wept and they hadn't been tears of joy but tears of misery.

"She kept telling me I hadn't even learned to take care of myself yet, so how was I ever going to take care of a wife," Stephen stated, smiling a little as he did. "Cecily didn't much care for that question. She told my mum she didn't need or want to be taken care of, that our marriage was going to be a partnership, each of us helping to care for the other."

"I bet that went over big."

"Let's just say my mum wasn't impressed, not in the least and by the time Cecily and I left that night I was beginning to waver a little in my decision."

"You're gonna let her talk you out of this," Cecily had stated during the car ride back to the dorms, and at first Stephen had been a little confused by her words as well as her anger. A few doubts had managed to work their way into his mind, but he was pretty certain this was common with any man standing at the foot of mount marriage. He hadn't been dwelling on them however, at least not as far as he knew and yet Cecily had seemed to pick up on them nonetheless.

"I'm scared, nothing wrong with that is there?"

"No, nothing wrong with that," had been her response, then she'd turned her face to the night beyond the car window and remained that way for the rest of the trip.

"Let me just say something here," Stephen interrupted his own story, feeling the need to explain to Sam something he had never bothered to explain to any one else. "I wasn't just scared. I was terrified. My mum had created a thousand different scenarios in my head, a million reasons why getting married at mine and Cecily's age would be disastrous. I wanted to be brave, to laugh them all off, but…but I couldn't and Cecily seemed to know this."

"I think I would have liked Cecily, had I met her."

"I think you would have too. In fact, in some ways you remind me a little of her." Stephen lifted his head a little turning his attention toward the rental car. In spite of the fact that the clouds had passed and the moonlight had found it's way into their little clearing, he could see no more of the interior of her place of entombment than he had before. Yet for a moment he imagined he could, imagined he could peer right through the layers of metal and glass and see Sam not as she looked right then and there but as she might have looked in another place, another time.

"I'm giving you a week Stephen, one week. During that time I want you to go out, have fun, party, drink, hang with your friends, hell you can even shag other women if that's what you want. But by the time the week is over, you come back to me and you tell me one way or another what it is you want to happen here between us."

"Wow…" Sam stated simply.

"Yeah, she sprang that on me that night when we went to bed. There was no shouting, no yelling, she just rolled over and dropped that little bomb."

Stephen had been stunned by Cecily's words, so much so that he couldn't even come up with the proper response. Long after she had finally turned away and drifted into sleep he had lay there, staring up at the ceiling, contemplating her words.

"The next morning when I woke, Cecily was gone," he stated softly. "She left me a note though, it said one week and nothing more."

He had gotten angry then, angry at Cecily for thinking he needed a week off to figure himself out, angry at his mother for causing him to feel doubt, and even angrier at himself for not having the guts to stand up to his parents and tell them it was his life and he would do as he wanted.

"Did you go after her, Cecily I mean?"

"No, actually I didn't," he stated, chuckling a little. "What I did do was drive to the nearest pub and spend the next six hours getting shitty."

He had called all his old friends, everyone he had ever partied with, even the guys that had been there the night of the dorm roof incident.

"The only person I could get to party with me was Stuart and I gotta tell you, as far as a drinking partner went, he was sorely lacking.."

Stuart couldn't hold his alcohol, two drinks and he was out cold leaving Stephen three sheets to the wind and with no company but himself.

"I didn't need a week it turned out, all I needed was that one night and I knew I was no longer that guy I used to be. I had become someone better than him and not because of some great awakening inside of me or some moment of epiphany. Cecily had made me better, stronger, more centered, more…everything."

"That's got to be one of the…nicest things I have ever heard anyone say about another person."

"Yeah well, it was the truth and not a day went by in our life together where I didn't feel myself grow a little more simply because she was at my side."

Stephen felt the tears slide down his cheek before he even realized he was crying, and for a moment he simply gave into them. As if sensing this, Sam fell silent.

"By the time Cecily returned," he said in a voice still thick with emotion, though he had managed to regain control somewhat. " I was ready to get married, that day, that minute, that very second."

"She made you go back and tell that to your Mom didn't she?"

"Yes, she did," Stephen said with a laugh, no longer surprised by Sam's ability to pick up on his thoughts and feelings. "We drove to their house that very day and I told my mum everything. Of course she didn't just sit there and go oh now I see Stephen, well yes that makes sense the two of you should get married after all. That wasn't the way my mum was."

"Let me guess, guilt , tears, everything in a mother's arsenal."

"Exactly," he stated. "Finally my dad, who up until that time had remained fairly silent, looked at my mum and told her to give it up."

"Just give it up Louise. Your son has made up his mind. He loves this girl. Can't you see that? And whether you accept it or not, he is going to marry her."

"Now for my Dad to say anything to my mum, let alone anything that went against her wishes, it took a lot on his part because he seemed to have learned a long time earlier that when it came to my mum's will it was easier to just duck your head and go along. He was a strong man, she was stronger and I think hearing him stand up to her was just enough of a shock to stun her into if not quiet acceptance at least silent compliance."

"So the two of you got married."

"Yeah, it wasn't a big to do, not the kind of wedding I would have liked to give her. We went to the magistrate, said our vows, made it legal, then went back to my parents place for a small party, because by then my mum had no choice but to make herself a part of it all."

"If I can't stop you, then I have no choice but to make the best of it."

"I'm gonna admit something now, something I have never admitted to anyone before, especially not my mum. The truth is, I think the fact that she, my mum I mean, was so against me and Cecily made our first night together as husband and wife all the more exciting if you get my meaning."

"Yeah, I get your meaning," Sam responded with a laugh.

"Whatever it was, that night, and I am certain it was that night, we conceived."

A whirlwind of images tore through Stephen's mind all at once, and tore was the only true way to describe as with every flash of internal recall he felt as if he were being ripped apart, rent from the soul outward.

"She miscarried it though," he said, in the midst of the tempest he was still facing, recalling all too well that dark day, when bloodied and broken Cecily had collapsed into his arms and sobbed for all she was worth.

"She was so strong, always the strongest of the two of us and more so than losing that child…more so than my own grief and pain, it was seeing her break that tore me apart, much like it was with you and your father."

"I don't want to do this again Stephen." It was nearly a week later, after the tears had been shed, after the emotions had been spilled, long after she had eradicated any signs of the child that should have been. He had been holding her, just holding her, trying not to imagine what their baby might have looked like had it had the chance to be, but failing miserably at pushing these thoughts out of his head. It had become a sort of masochistic exercise for him, the only way he could make himself feel half as much pain as he was certain Cecily was dealing with.

"What are you taking about Ce? We have to keep trying. I mean eventually…"

"No, you aren't listening. I don't want to do this again. I'm not sure I could handle losing another child. I mean…maybe we aren't supposed to have kids. Maybe this is God's way of telling us that."

"I didn't argue with her, figured it was best not to under those circumstances. I just let the subject drop for a time and so did she."

In truth, this topic wouldn't come up again for nearly two years later and then, it would rear its head in such a way that they would have no choice but to talk about it. But for a time, it slid between the cracks, lost among the million other things the two of them had going on in their lives.

"Both of us were still in school, still working. Cecily had managed to land one job that paid well and had no need for three. I had stayed at the restaurant. By then I had actually reached a point where I knew what I was doing and could do it well, which for me at the time was a rarity as I had a tendency to stick to nothing. Besides being there offered me a chance to make connections with people that might be able to help me in the career I was considering, so…"

Stephen found himself at a point in his story where it was either reveal his true identity or let the entire subject drop for the time being and simply move on, in the end that was what he did, skipping past the early moments in what would turn out to be a long journey on the road to success, a journey littered with pitfalls and bad decisions.

"So…like I said, for two years we let the subject of children drop, though I really don't think it was ever far from either of our thoughts, at least not as far as we would have liked. I know it crossed my mind often enough and there were times, moments now and then would I would enter a room and find Cecily staring off into space, lost for a time inside her own mind, her hand stroking her abdomen as if remembering what had been or longing for what she had become certain would never be."

It was near the beginning of Cecily's last year in med school that she became pregnant once more and this time all the joy and hope she should have been feeling, both of them should have been feeling, was lost behind a haze of fear. For three months they walked on eggshells, doing there best to pretend what was happening wasn't really taking place, preparing themselves for the worst, trying not to imagine the best.

"It wasn't until nearly the fifth month that we actually sat and discussed the pregnancy and it might have been longer had I not come home and found Cecily in tears one night."

"I'm scared Stephen, so very scared right now," she had admitted to him, though he hadn't had to hear the words to recognize her concern. It was there on her beautiful face, in her eyes, in everything she did.

"I know," he had told her, pulling her into his arms and holding her close and she continued to weep. "I'm scared too, but there comes a time when we have to stop being afraid and start considering the possibility that this time, this time it will all work out for the best."

"Four weeks," she'd told him seriously, brushing at the wetness on her cheeks and looking at him seriously. "In four weeks, once I have passed the six month stage, that's when I'll allow myself to become excited. Until then, I prefer we don't talk about it, got it."

"I had no choice but to agree. I mean what was I gonna say? I couldn't tell her I had already gone out and bought a crib and blankets and bottles and other stuff."

"I'm willing to bet you had also bought a baseball glove already."

"Cricket bat love, remember I'm British," he responded to her words, hearing her chuckle a little at this.

"So four more weeks we waited and they were long weeks, made up of even longer days and nights. She kept working, going to school as did I. Then it happened."

"Oh God don't tell me she lost that baby as well," Sam stated softly, concern clearly evident in her voice.

"No, thank God for that."

It was mid March and the funny thing was even years past this moment he could remember that it had been a clear night, no fog, no rain, a slight chill in the air, but at the same time, there had been a promise of spring as well. He'd worked late, stayed through the dinner rush and a rush it had been. He'd arrived home exhausted, wanting nothing more than to put his feet up, have a cup of tea, watch a little telly and go off to bed.

"What's all this then?" It hadn't worked out that way however as the instant he had stepped into his and Cecily's apartment, he had been greeted by the smell of food and the sight of their tiny table decorated with candles, wine, and the fine china his own mother had given them when they had been married.

"Take a seat, I'll get you drink and as soon as the hens are done, we'll have a nice dinner." Cecily, although a whiz when it came to domesticity seldom cooked and he had never faulted her on this as her life was a whirlwind of activity like his and ordering out just seemed simpler. But she had gone above and beyond this night and he couldn't help but wonder when she had found the time in between classes and work.

"It's time Stephen," she'd told him, once the table was laid with their meal and she had finally seated herself across from him.

"Time for what?"

"Time to decide on a name for this baby," she stated, and for several seconds his breath had caught in his lungs. "I asked you for four weeks and today is the end of those four weeks. I'm six months along in this pregnancy, well past the point where…well you know."

He had known, all too well, had in fact read up on the subject after their first miscarriage.

"Scarier than any horror novel I had ever picked up in my life. The things that can go wrong during a pregnancy are…frightening to say the least."

"I think it's gonna be a boy." Cecily had gone on to tell him, and that was when he'd finally let it out, not only the breath he had been holding but the fear that had wrapped itself tightly around his heart, squeezing out anything else he might have wanted to feel.

"I bloody well hope so because if it isn't I spent 20 pounds on a cricket bat for nothing."

They never got around to dinner that night, at least not until several hours later, instead he had carried her into their room and made love to her, slowly, passionately, and more importantly, carefully. After that they had talked for hours, deciding on names, trying to figure out how they were going to fit a crib into their bedroom which was about as big as a postage stamp and already crammed full of their belongings that wouldn't fit anywhere else. At some point during that night, Stephen knew the time had come to step forward and leave behind the remains of the boy he used to be, the remains that still lingered inside of him, the ones that kept him hanging on at the restaurant even though he knew it was a go nowhere job, the same ones that kept him school when every part of his being told him it wasn't necessary for him to achieve the plans and goals he had set for himself.

In reality, he had been holding himself back as far as his dreams went and looking around their apartment that night while Cecily slept, a small smile on her beautiful face, some part of him realized it was now or never, that either he was going to go for it or spend the rest of his life struggling to make ends meet, hating what he did, hating himself for failing without ever having tried.

"So I dropped out of school, told my parents it was just a hiatus, though the truth was I never planned on going back and I think my father recognized that fact. I hung on to the restaurant job though, knowing I needed the money, knowing it would keep our heads above water for the time being if nothing else panned out for me."

But it had panned out and in a big way. Stephen had started showing up for auditions, commercials, television shows, a few movies and to his surprise he landed a few roles, nothing major, nothing earth shaking, but it was a start, a foot in the door.

"All my life I wanted to be an actor," he said aloud, knowing there really was no way he could go further in his story unless he admitted to Sam who he was and what he did. His career was an intricate part of it all, interwoven, intermingled in all aspects of his existence.

"I knew who you were already," she responded, and he was a little surprised by this but not completely stunned. "I just…I figured now wasn't the best time to have you sign an autograph for me."

"I wouldn't have anyway, all requests for autographs have to be submitted through my agent."

"I have to tell you Stephen, I've never followed your career. I'm not a real big movie person, to be honest I would rather sit and read then spend two hours in a dark theater with a bunch of strangers, pulling my feet from the floor to keep them from sticking."

"Yeah…no worries. Honestly I'm a little glad for that, can't imagine what it would have been like to be stuck here with some teeny bopper, overexcited pre hormonal fan."

"Cecily supported you in this?"

"All the way," he responded softly. Remembering the long talks the two of them had had before the baby was born.

"I want to do what's right by you and our child but at the same time I feel like if I turn my back on this I will never really be happy with myself and our life.."

"It's alright Stephen," she had assured him softly. "No matter where you go, no matter what you do, I, or rather we…." She had caressed her swollen abdomen at this point. "We will always be with you."

So during the last trimester of Cecily's pregnancy he gave everything he had to his new and budding career.

"It wasn't until after our son was born though that I got my first real big break."

"A son, you must have been thrilled."

He had been thrilled, thrilled to the point where he was all but bursting with it. Nathan William Morgan entered the world in one great rush or so it seemed. His delivery was a fairly easy one as far as deliveries went and in every conceivably possible way, he was perfect, absolutely perfect.

"By then, Cecily had already finished med school, she had until fall before she had to begin her residency, so…for the first three months of Nathan's life, she devoted every moment she had to taking care of him."

Stephen hesitated at this point in his story, shifting his position a little in an attempt to get comfortable though it didn't work. In truth he knew he was stalling. Up until then everything he had told Sam about himself had made him seem endearing, loving caring even. But what came next, this part of his story, would change all that and he considered glossing over it, skipping ahead, though some part of him had a feeling she would pick up on this and draw it out of him nonetheless. With a sigh he lay his head back in the grass, imagining the person he had been then, the man who had spent his entire life wanting or so it seemed and suddenly had it all.

"A lot of people have to work hard in life," he began softly. "They have to work at being good students, good husbands, good fathers, good in general. I myself struggled at these things, struggled hard in fact. The only thing that ever came easy to me, the only identity that I ever claimed that didn't come with a lot of labor was being an actor believe it or not."

"He's a natural." Right from the beginning days of his career, this seemed to be the theme song everyone sung when they were heralding him, and herald him they did. He had talent, the effortless kind that came without him even having to try all that hard.

"To begin with, I had a photographic memory or so it seemed when it came to the scripts I was given. I'm not bragging, but I could learn my lines in one sitting, whether it was ten or ten thousand, the words stuck with me and not just the words but the thoughts and feelings behind them as well."

"Everyone has something they are good at Stephen, it's lucky that you found yours and so early in life." Sam commented all at once.

"Yeah, lucky," he remarked "Like I said before my first real big break didn't come until Nathan was born. He was in fact two months old when I was offered the leading role in a major motion picture. It was one of the low budget romantic comedies, nothing spectacular, nothing earth moving, but I was thrilled nonetheless."

"I'll have to be on location in Paris for the next two months."

Cecily hadn't been thrilled about this, but she had hid her disappointment well, encouraging him to take the part, urging him on even though some part of him had known she would have much rather begged him to stay with her and their child.

"Anyway I went and had I not already been in love the whole acting this, being in this movie would have done it for me. It was….amazing, absolutely amazing. The film didn't do all that well in the theaters, it was a little campy, the dialogue a little on the corny side, the critics ripped it to shreds in fact, all of it… except me."

They had loved him amazingly enough, had called him the only bright light in an otherwise dismal and disastrous roller coaster of crap.

"Suddenly, everyone wanted a piece of me. Scripts poured in from all over the place, faster than I could read them there were stacks and stacks more and I wanted to do all of them, wanted it more than anything else at that time. I did try, at one point I think I was working on three films and a television show all at the same time. I would leave one set, go to another, spend an hour in makeup there, be in front of the camera for six hours, then move to the next set, the next character."

"Where, in all of this, did you find time to see Cecily and Nathan?" That was the question he had been expecting her to ask, the one he had been dreading and anticipating at the same time.

"I…I didn't," he stated in a low voice, knowing without having to be told that this disappointed her a little, just as he had been certain it would. "A year went by before I knew it, then two. Cecily had dropped out of her internship. To be honest I can't even remember if she had told me she was going to do it or not. All I know for certain is that days, weeks, months passed in a blur of activity and before I realized it, before I even knew it, Nathan was five years old and my wife and child were complete strangers to me."

"Oh Stephen," Sam said, and it wasn't disappointment he heard in her words this time, it was pity.

"I'd like to say I had another of those great awakenings the way I had after I took that leap off the dorm roof, but I guess in life you only get one of those, because I remained oblivious, for another year at least. I kept right on giving every part of myself to my acting, leaving nothing for my family, nothing at all."

"Then Cecily got sick," Sam interrupted him, and he was surprised by the sob that choked him into silence in that moment. It erupted from him without warning.

"It took that," he cried miserably. "It took her getting sick for me to wake up and smell the damn coffee. Why the hell did… it take that?"

"It's cancer." These words echoed inside of his mind for a time, over and over again the way they had the day Cecily had sat him down and told him of the diagnosis she had received.

"Pancreatic cancer, inoperable, untreatable," he was still weeping as he said these words, spitting them out as if they tasted bitter and they in fact did.

"So I stopped. I just…I stopped," he wept, managing to regain control of himself somewhat, though the tears kept falling, one after another, a thousand more tears to add to the billions he had shed at that time and since over the loss of the woman he had loved and so horribly failed.

"She lasted six months."

By the end, she was a wasted hull, so emaciated and so frail that it was difficult at times for him to look at her and remember the Cecily she had once been, the strong, vibrant woman that had so enraptured him right from the first moment he lay eyes on her.

"She fought it," he whispered. "She fought it with everything she had, but there…there was …nothing to be done."

She died at home, in bed, just as she had wanted to, just as she had planned to. He had been there, at her side, holding her hand though at that point she had been so drugged up he was certain she had not even realized where she was or who was at her side.

"But she knew, somehow she knew."

"Nathan needs you Stephen," her words had been slurred, almost too low to hear but he had managed to decipher them nonetheless, leaning close to her. "He needs you in his life, now more than ever. So…I want you to promise me, promise me you will be there for him."

"I…I promise Ce."

Stephen stopped talking then, lowering his head and falling silent, giving in to his emotions for a time. Sam said nothing, in fact it seemed for a few moments their little corner of the world held it's breath, allowing him to grieve.

"I couldn't do it," he whispered after a time, running a shaking hand over his face, surprised to find how weary his display of emotions had left him feeling. "I wanted to. I made an attempt at doing so, but I…I just couldn't do it."

"It'll be better for him mum."

"Better for him…or for you."

"I'm done talking for awhile," Stephen interrupted his own thoughts, pushing them aside, forcing himself back to the moment at hand, to the wet grass, his aching head, the numbness in his legs and the weariness that seemed bone deep and almost overwhelming.

He didn't give Sam a chance to respond this time, not that she would have as she had been silent for a while, instead he closed his eyes and drifted off, feeling the pull of darkness and simply giving in to it.

Stephen awoke next to the sound of a phone ringing and for several seconds he merely lay there, eyes closed, certain that what he was hearing was just a part of the twisted dream that had haunted him the entire time he had been asleep or unconscious. But the ringing persisted, long after he finally managed to open his eyes and immediately he knew it was coming from his cell phone, somewhere in the remnants of his jag.

"It's been ringing off and on for an hour," Sam stated. "Someone must be really desperate to get in touch with you."

A quick glance told Stephen he had been out a lot longer than before. The first rays of morning light were beginning to filter into the clearing and if he had to guess he would have put it somewhere around six am.

"Did you sleep as well?" He asked, carefully casting a glance toward his broken automobile, not at all surprised to find that in the growing light it looked far worse than it had the night before.

"I tried to, but…."

"Sam, I'm so sorry," he whispered all at once, uncertain at first as to what he was apologizing for the accident, falling asleep, or his revelation to her hours earlier regarding Cecily's death and his failure to keep her last promise.

"You don't owe me anything Stephen," she responded softly.

"No, I do. I owe you a great deal," he assured her, feeling weepy yet again as he took a deep breath and prepared himself for telling the last part of the whole tragedy. "I did try. I tried hard if you must know."

He took a break from movie making, stayed at home with Nathan, spent all his time with his son, holding him when he cried, talking to him when he needed encouragement, listening when he needed someone to hear.

"I found out a couple of things in that first year after Cecily passed," he said brushing at his eyes. "First that our son, Nathan, was a great kid, strong, vibrant, endearing, all the things Cecily had been and so much more. She used to say…he was the better parts of both of us, and…and I discovered that she was right about this."

"What else?" Sam asked.

"What else what?"

"You said you found out a couple of things, what else did you find out?"

Stephen sighed softly at this.

"I also found out that I was never going to be the father my dad was." In spite of everything, all the chances he had to make it up to Nathan, to be there for him, to be the parent he knew he should be, after a time his own grief at losing Cecily got the better of him.

"I...I started drinking," he admitted, saying aloud the one secret he had coveted for entirely too long. "Let me explain something to you though just so you get a clear picture of it all. In my life I had failed at a lot of things except acting, acting was the one thing I excelled at until I became a drunk, then acting became one of two things I was truly gifted at."

No one had ever known how badly it got for him that first year, no one except Nathan, a few of the staff at his house, and Stuart, though he wouldn't truly find out until later on. He hid it so well, too well in fact which was probably why it went on for as long as it had. He developed a way of acting sober, as simple as that. It didn't matter how much he consumed, how far into his cups he got, when he wanted to, when he needed to, he could make himself the picture of sobriety and not a soul could guess he was in truth absolutely wasted out of his gourd.

"I ended up sending Nathan to live with my parents," he all but blurted out, needing to get that revelation off his chest as it had begun to weigh upon him heavily and again he could feel Sam's disappointment, only this time it ired it him a little. "It's easy isn't it, to judge my actions, to stand on the outside of it all and find me guilty of so many things?"

"I'm not judging you Stephen," she responded to his anger with a dose of her own and that surprised him a little.

"Oh I think you are," he spit out these words almost viciously. "I think you are thinking that I had it all, that I had everything a man could want, a beautiful wife, a wonderful son, a promising career, a bright future, and that I pissed it all away, just…pissed it away."

There was silence following his outburst, a long silence in which he replayed his own words, feeling foolish after a time for having said them not because they weren't true, simply because the truth in them had come from him and not Sam.

"It was easier for me to send Nathan away," he stated finally, once he had regained control of himself and realized she wasn't going to respond to his rants. "I told my mum I was doing it for him, that he needed to be somewhere stable, somewhere normal, but the truth is…I did it for me."

"Why do I have to go stay with gram and gramps?"

"Because …you just do alright. It's just for awhile, just until…just until I can get things back together again here."

That had been a lie, even as he told those words to his son Stephen had known that sending him away would be permanent, forever. He wanted to be alone, away from the sight of his only child, the child that Cecily had bore him, had doted on, had loved, the same child that now served only as a reminder to Stephen of how miserably he had failed at being the person he had promised Cecily he would and could be.

"It's what's best for him."

"Best for him…or for you?"

How many times since had these words played through his mind? His mother's words or rather, his mother's accusation. Too many times for him to count and always when it came down to the answer he had managed to push it aside, unwilling to allow himself to admit the truth.

"It was best for me," he said all at once.

"I'm sorry Stephen." This time it was Sam who apologized, and slowly he lifted his head and looked toward the overturned rental, unable to see anymore of her in the daylight than he had in the dark.

"Why are you sorry?" He questioned softly, surprised to find all his anger had left him and what remained in its place was guilt, a gnawing sense of culpability that seemed to have been present within him every moment of every day since Cecily slipped away.

"You said before that you failed your wife and that later you failed your son as well, but I think the person you failed the most, was yourself. You pushed it all away, took the easy path, buried your pain, erased any signs of the life you had before, not because you wanted to, but because you were certain that if you tried, truly tried to be the person and the father you needed to be, that you would fall short of those goals."

"I would have," he whispered shakily.

"No, I think you're wrong. I think if you had given yourself the chance, you would have been surprised at how well you did."

He didn't argue these words, nor did he agree with them. Instead he simply pondered over them briefly.

"How long has it been since you saw him, Nathan I mean?"

"Eight years," he whispered.

"It's never too late you know."

Her words echoed inside of him for a time, over and over again, until finally they faded away. From the shattered remnants of his jag, the phone began to ring once more, and he turned toward it surprised to find the sound felt more like an intrusion on reality rather than a reminder of one.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Sam too listened to the cell phone ringing, absently counting the number of times it chimed.

"Ten," she stated aloud. "It rang ten times and that means whoever is trying to reach you is starting to get a little desperate and concerned."

"I can't imagine anyone being desperate or concerned about me," Stephen responded, and she sighed a little at this, unwilling to admit that she herself felt both these things as far as he went. Desperate because she knew time was slipping away from them, time and the chance of surviving, concerned because somehow, through the long night they had weathered, she was certain that if she went first, if she passed on and left Stephen to survive alone, he would never forgive himself for her, it would be yet one more layer of guilt for him, perhaps one layer too many.

"What does Nathan think of you, of your career I mean?" She questioned, wanting to talk, needing to talk, needing to be distracted from her own pain and the sensation of time getting shorter and shorter.

"He doesn't as far as I know," Stephen stated. "My mum sends me letters, pictures, calls me now and then. From what she tells me, Nathan is doing quite well with her and my dad. He plays cricket, excels in school, he even has a girlfriend and next year when he graduates he's already been accepted to college so….so maybe what I did turned out in the end to be exactly what I claimed it was at the time, the best thing for him."

"Just because he managed to weather the storm, doesn't mean he didn't get wet."

"What the hell does that mean?" He asked, and for the first time in hours Sam felt herself smile a little.

"I don't know really, just another of those sayings my mom has."

"Tell me about your mum Sam. I mean you speak about your father a lot, but other than a few catch phrases here and there you never really say all that much about your mother." He was trying to change the subject, and for several seconds Sam hesitated, then with a sigh decided she would let him off the hook for the time being.

"What's to tell really…she's a typical mom, she worries about me, tries to take care of me, has a stranglehold over my life at times, and wishes more than anything else that I would find a good man, settle down, and find happiness."

But there was a lot more to her mom than what she was saying. Her explanation was oversimplified at best, a glossed over version of a woman who was actually so much more than just a nagging, overbearing, nervous Nelly.

"I was an only child," Sam began to speak before she even truly thought about where it was she intended to go with her words. "Not because that was how my parents wanted it to be. My mom in fact wanted lots of kids, a whole houseful of them, but some things are simply not meant to be and this was one of those things."

Two years after Sam had been born, her mother had been forced to have a hysterectomy. There had been complications, what precisely she had never known, but in the end it had left her mother barren and unable to get pregnant.

"I guess that's why she focused so much of her attention on me." All of her attention was closer to the truth. Everything Sam did when she was younger her mother scrutinized, picked apart, and questioned.

"I think she's one of the reasons I became a tomboy to begin with. I guess I was hoping if I acted the exact opposite of how she wanted me to, that eventually she would just leave me alone and find something else to fixate on."

"It didn't work did it?"

"Up until a point, but I have come to realize with my mother, the more you try and push her away, the more you ignore her and run circles around her, the tighter she draws the noose."

Sam had, in truth, never been really close to her mother, not the way she had with her father. In her life, as far as she could recall, there were very few moments when she and the woman who gave her life had sat and simply talked, shared their thoughts and feelings, spoke of their dreams, their fears, their concerns.

"I guess that was more my doing then hers. She wanted us to be like that, to be able to share anything with one another but I could never get past the feeling that she was judging me, constantly weighing everything about me and deciding I fell short."

"Just say it Mom, you think this whole trip is a waste of time."

"Yes, as a matter of fact I do and I think if you really took the time to consider it, you would as well."

They had argued the last time they spoke. It was the day before she had left for London. Sam had been waffling a bit in her decision to make the trip, that was why she had called her mother in the first place, because some part of her had known the woman would disapprove, would voice a negative opinion and this alone would give her the courage and the strength she needed to make her decision.

"Yeah well, it's my life mother, my time and if I want to waste it then I guess I have that right," she had shouted back, slamming the phone down before her mom could respond . She had called back, some part of Sam had known she would and for nearly an hour she had managed to avoid the ringing before it finally began to drive her mad and she was forced to answer it.

"How much time had been wasted already Sam?" Those were her words of greeting, the first words she had spoken after Sam had said hello "It's been eight years now, eight years. How long are you going to keep wasting time before you realize you have a right to live again?"

They had seldom spoken of Sabrina, remaining silent about her death was a sort of unspoken rule between them and for several long moments Sam had been unable to respond, to breathe, to think clearly.

"You couldn't save her. Dan couldn't save her. No one could save her and of the two of you, Dan seems to be the only one who has come to terms with that fact and if he can realize it, being as thickheaded as he is, then why can't you?"

"My Mom never much liked Dan," Sam interjected, feeling the need to explain this statement further as it made her mom all at once seems harsh and a little mean. "She…she said he was a taker, not a giver, that emotionally he would never be there for me when I needed him."

"Was she right?" Stephen asked, and Sam found herself stumbling over her own words, unable to answer this question, remembering all too well how much it had hurt when Dan had walked away, leaving her alone with her grief, leaving her alone with her pain, leaving her alone period.

In the five years since that moment, she had convinced herself that what he had done had been what was best for both of them. She had been falling apart, broken, a shattered mess dealing with a tragedy that for too long she had managed to avoid facing. He had already dealt with it, dealt with and managed somehow to move on and some part of her had accepted that this was his right, that this was the way things had to be. But looking back all at once, facing that moment again in her mind, she suddenly saw things from a whole new perspective, from the perspective her mother might have seen it from, and for the first time since that moment she found herself wondering why, why Dan couldn't have weathered her grief with her, why he couldn't have just held on and helped her struggle through, why it was easier for him to walk away then to stand strong when she had needed him the most.

"I can't Samantha. I can't do it. I've been there and back again and to be honest with you, I don't feel like making that trip again. I barely survived it the first time."

"So…that's it then? Just like that, you're leaving me?"

"I think it's the best thing for both of us. This isn't a marriage anymore, this is two people who can't stand to look each other, afraid of the memories they see in the others eyes. I deserve to be happy again, you deserve to be happy again and that's never gonna happen as long as we are together. It's for the best, trust me on this."

"I didn't argue with him about it, didn't say another word in fact. I just sat there as he gathered his belongings and left and to this day, I regret my silence," Sam said softly, surprised to find her hands clenched white with unexpressed anger.

"What would you have said Sam? What would you say to him right now if he were here?"

For a long time she pondered this question, long enough for the sun to fully emerge in the sky, it's rays touching upon her in her place of confinement. It felt good, this little sliver of warmth and for a short time she ignored Stephen's question allowing the glow of the new day to play across her fingertips.

"It wasn't fair," she said finally, and she could almost sense Stephen lifting his head and looking in her direction. "It wasn't fair and it wasn't right," she went on, laying her head back against the seat and closing her eyes. "I was there for him. I was there when he needed me to be there, every time he needed me. But the first time I turned to him for anything, the first time I reached out expecting him to be my strength when I couldn't be strong he…he bailed on me, he ran away."

How many tears had she shed over Dan? Too many to count, too many to name. The pain of losing him had rivaled that of Sabrina and recovering completely was something she had yet to accomplish even to this day. He overshadowed her life, overshadowed everything as a matter of fact, and some part of her knew, even had Carl lived, this was the reason they would have never gone any further in their relationship then they had, because he wasn't Dan, he could never be Dan and after everything was said and done, Dan was the only man she had ever truly …..

"You alright Sam?" Stephen interrupted her before her mind could fill in the missing word and for a moment she was grateful for that.

"No, no I'm not alright," she responded, feeling that surge of anger yet again. "I think I just stumbled across a truth that for too long I have been denying. Sadly, it's a truth my mother pointed out to me more than once since the divorce."

"You still love him don't you?" Stephen stated, and she didn't trust herself to words for several moments.

"Dan and I were supposed to get married right after I finished high school," she stated finally, deciding not to answer his question just yet and instead casting her thoughts back to that moment, to the way she had looked, the way she had felt, the entire event that had shaped her future for a time, given it form, given it purpose. "He proposed to me the night of his senior prom, right in the middle of the dance floor with everyone looking on."

"It didn't happen though, did it?" Stephen asked, and for a moment Sam again fell silent, held breathless and still by that golden moment when Dan had knelt before her and slipped that ring on her finger. "Sam, it didn't happen did it?" Stephen questioned yet again and reluctantly she allowed herself to be dragged back from her memories.

"No, it didn't happen, at least not the way it was planned."

"We'll wait until after you graduate and join me up at the university. It'll be great Sam, we'll get an apartment together, settle in, and start our new life."

"Dan was a year ahead of me in school," Sam went on to explain, his words, Dan's words, his promises really, still echoing inside of her mind. Hearing them again, in retrospect, after the facts and out of context, she was forced to recognize now how hollow they had sounded, how empty and lacking they now seemed.

"I think it's the best thing for both of us." It was funny, but up until that moment she had never realized that Dan had used the same tone when he had told her this that he had been using all those years ago when he had been painting a picture of their future together. It was a tone of desperation, the tone of a scared man running.

"Anyway," she continued finally, swallowing hard the emotions this realization stirred inside of her. "We had to be apart for a year, and let me tell you that was the longest year of my life, everyday felt like an eternity, every moment, slow torture."

She had been so frightened, she remembered that now, afraid that things would change between her and Dan, that he would wake up one day and ask himself what he was doing with her.

"I always felt so lucky you know, being Dan's girl and all. I mean, he could have done better than me. He was always so popular, so…good looking, so outgoing. There were a million girls who would have done anything to be with him, and yet, he had chosen me, and every moment we were apart I kept thinking…he would change his mind and decide I wasn't really what he wanted."

"You make it sound as if you had won some sort of contest with Dan and you were waiting around for someone else to claim your prize."

"It felt a little like that," Sam responded to Stephen's quip. "I mean who was I really, some tom boy who had suffered most of her life with an identity crisis, and still had trouble at times being the person she was meant to be."

"I think you sold yourself short Sam," Stephen commented and she fell silent again for a time, unable to either confirm or deny his remark.

"Anyway, when I finally did graduate and join Dan at school my worst fears had been realized."

There was an old saying her mother had once shared with her, something having to do with being a big fish in a little pond and vice versa. Over the years she had forgotten the exact words, but the meaning had remained, and some part of her had assumed that once Dan, a big fish in high school had gotten to the university and found he wasn't as much of a big fish as he had first believed himself to be, that maybe, just maybe, the two of them would end up on level ground for the first time since he seated himself across from her in art class.

"In high school I was nowhere near as popular as he had been and I accepted that. But I couldn't help but think in college it would be different, that instead of having the advantage Dan would finally be…just another small fish like me."

"Everyone knows you," she recalled the exact moment when this notion died, the notion of Dan being anything other than the popular guy he had always been. It was less than ten minutes after her arrival, she and him had scarcely climbed out of his car and stepped onto the campus when the realization hit her that she was never gonna be the kind of girl Dan deserved, the kind of girl Dan's stature warranted.

"Had a bit of a self doubt problem when you were younger didn't you?" Stephen questioned, and in spite of herself Sam chuckled a little at this.

"Oh you have no idea," she remarked, still smiling a bit as she remembered her many attempts to fit in with those around her, attempts that always ended badly. "My mother always called me unique."

"Which is just a nice way o saying strange is it not?" Stephen teased, and again she chuckled at this, her laughter fading slowly as she recalled what happened next with Dan and how close she had come at that time to choosing a path that might not have lead to her marriage to Dan, or Sabrina for that matter, or to the moment she was facing in that clearing, which out of everything was the one thing she could have handled missing out on.

"So, let me take a stab at this whole…intuition thing." Stephen went on to say, humor still present in his words. "You…had a make over, redid yourself to become the kind of girl you thought Dan deserved."

"No, I dumped him actually," Sam stated.

"Well I'm not very good at this at all am I?" Stephen remarked, seeming utterly stunned by her words which was precisely the reaction she had received from Dan..

"What do you mean it's over?" He had questioned, looking more angry then hurt in that moment, a fact that had only served to make her believe what she was doing was the best thing for both of them.

"Let me explain something to you Stephen," Sam said softly, already feeling the stirring of her own emotions once more. "I loved Dan, that hadn't changed, but…I loved him enough to realize that he was never truly going to be happy with me, that I would always be the one holding him back, tying him down when all he really wanted was to fly away."

"Now I can't help but think you sold him a little short on that."

"I did actually," Sam responded softly. Some part of her had expected Dan to simply disappear once they had broken up, to simply run away, or more to the point run toward the new life he had been released upon, but that hadn't happened.

"He didn't give up on me." She said, smiling warmly. "I tried to make him, but…he didn't give up."

For two months Dan had sent her flowers, candy, letters, balloons, any corny, gaudy expression of love he could find, he sent it to her and with the same message attached.

"Come back tome, that was what he asked."

She had done her best to ignore him, had buried her nose in her class work, and went out of her way to avoid the places where he might be waiting, watching…

"Lurking, was more like it," she said with a laugh. "I was flattered, extremely flattered as a matter of fact."

It had all come to a screeching, grinding halt right about the time when Dan's father had passed away.

"He and his dad were close, really close as a matter of fact and when he died, Dan was absolutely devastated to the point where…where everyone was concerned he might not be able to go on."

He had left school to attend the funeral but hadn't come back afterwards, not when he was expected to return nor days later.

"His mom called me two weeks after the services and begged me to come see him. She said…he wasn't weathering the whole thing all that well"

What Sam had found that day was a different Dan, a Dan she hardly recognized, a Dan she wouldn't again see until years later when he was faced with the loss of Sabrina.

"What are you doing here Samantha?" He had questioned her when she had walked upon him seated in the grass beside his father's tombstone, oblivious or so it seemed to the rain that had soaked him thoroughly and had him trembling from its chill.

"I could ask you the same thing," she had told him, kneeling before him, doing her nest to catch his eye though this hadn't been an easy thing. "This Isn't how your father would want things to be Dan and you know it."

"What do you care?" Had been his response.

"I do care Dan, I care a lot as a matter of face, probably more than you even realize." She had told him, no longer concerned about the wet grass beneath her, dropping to her knees before him and reaching out to take his hand. "I love you …and… I just wanted you to know I am here for you, if you need me to be, if you want me to be."

"He had a heart attack," Dan had called to her after she had finally risen, certain all at once that she had come to late to save him, come to late to save them. "Can you believe that? A heart attack, him. He was the ….the strongest man I knew."

"It's funny but…I was starting to not like Dan all that much if you want to know the truth." Stephen stated all at once. "But now…now I kind of feel sorry for the guy. I mean, there he was, he had lost you and then his father."

"He hadn't lost me really. I just…I think the only reason I dumped in the first place was because I wanted to know if he was willing to fight in order to get me back." In retrospect it seemed like such a selfish reason, and for a moment she felt her cheeks warm with embarrassment, first for ever having done something so underhanded, and secondly for admitting it aloud for the first time.

"So…after that the two of you got married eh?" Stephen asked, purposely avoiding commenting on her recent words, no doubt sensing her embarrassment and wanting to ease it a bit.

"Well it was a few months later actually."

The wedding had been small, friends, family, nothing close to the gala Dan had given Alyson when they had shared their nuptials, yet Sam hadn't felt shortchanged or in anyway slighted by this at the time. All that mattered was that she and Dan were husband and wife, all that mattered was they were now walking together on the path of life, facing whatever obstacle life threw their way as a team. At the time she could not have possibly foreseen what lay ahead for them, the insurmountable obstacle that would rip them apart in the end.

"Dan and I…were together a few days before I left for London." And there it was, the truth she had all but decided to leave buried, and suddenly, almost without thought was revealing to a perfect stranger.. "At the time I think I just wanted to know what it was like to feel alive again, the way I had when we were starting out, the way I had before…before Sabrina was taken from us."

"Is that all you wanted Sam…truly?"

"No," she whispered softly, feeling her face warm yet again, this time in shame for what she had done, for what she and Dan had shared. "No…I think I wanted him to…look at me and maybe feel, I don't know regret, remorse. I wanted him to still need me the way some part of me still needed him. Does that make any sense at all?"

"It makes sense," Stephen stated, and Sam held her breath waiting for him to tell her that she had been wrong, that her actions had been wrong, but he never did and after a second, she shakily released the breath she had been holding.

"Sam, can I ask you something?"

"Why not, you already know more about me than nearly everyone else in my life."

"How did it happen, with Sabrina I mean?" Yet again Sam took a deep breath feeling the grind of metal in her side, a sensation that had been there right from the start, one she had chosen to ignore and continued to do so.

"We were shopping," she began, closing her eyes, surprised to find that without the need of thinking too hard about that day she could remember vividly how her daughter had looked, what she'd worn, the way her hair had been combed, the expression on her face. "Sabrina liked to play dress up. It was one of her favorite things to do and that afternoon she had on a tiara, a tutu, a pink shirt with a horse on it, and black leggings."

"That's quite the outfit," Stephen said with a small chuckle.

"Yeah. I remember people kept looking at her and I kept saying …"

"See, I told you to change before we came to the mall."

"I like the way I look," she had argued lightly.

"Yeah well now everyone is staring at you."

"That's because they wish they could dress like I do."

There had been some truth in this statement, not in the sense that everyone wanted to run around in a pink tutu and black leggings. The truth was more along the lines of having a free spirit, being able to put aside the opinions of those around you and simply be and do what your heart wanted.

"Children are great in that they haven't yet reached the point in their lives when going along to get along becomes their mantra."

"Nathan used to wear boxing gloves and a hockey mask out in public sometimes just because he wanted to."

"If only we could be that free, that unshackled by the constraints of society," Sam stated, hearing the wistfulness in her voice, trying to remember the last time she had done anything on a whim and very quickly realizing she was where she was at that very moment for just that very reason.

"Anyway, we had just left the food court. Sabrina had pizza and I had a cup of coffee, Mocha java." She hadn't been hungry, she remembered that now. She and Dan had argued that day, also something that she had not recalled until that very moment. Something had been bothering him, for nearly a week he had been a little off, not off in a way that anyone including their daughter had taken note of, but off as only Sam could see.

"What are you talking about Samantha? I'm fine, everything is fine. Why do you have to go looking for problems when there aren't any to find?"

But there had been problems, beneath the calm surface, in the depths where to everyone else they were hidden.

"He'd been distracted, moody, sometimes I would catch him staring at me and in his eyes I would see…panic, I guess that's the only way to describe it. It was like he had woken upand looked around at his life, the life he was living, so normal, so…close to perfect as it could get and was suddenly scared."

"Scared of what?" Stephen questioned.

"I don't know…maybe he was afraid that...that this was how he was going to spend the rest of his days, the same routine, the same woman sleeping next to him, the same problems to be faced, the same troubles to be overcome."

"Or …maybe he was afraid because everything was so perfect, that something was going to come along and ruin it."

Something had come along, but not the something either of them could have ever predicted.

"She…she didn't just drop like a stone," Sam said, feeling the sting of tears yet again as she cast her mind back to that moment, pushing thoughts of Dan aside for the time being., knowing it was now or never, either she was going to tell what happened to Sabrina, every brutal, grueling detail, right then and there or she was going to bury it once more beneath the layers of her own guilt.

"For a long time afterwards I had myself convinced that that was how it happened, that she dropped like a stone right there in front of Barnes and Nobles and she was gone without so much as a second to spare, but…it didn't happen like that."

"Then what did happen?"

"She spoke to me," Sam stated softly.

"Don't cry Mommy." Those were her words, the very words that Sam had spent so long trying to forget, trying to erase from her memory not so much because she didn't want to recall them, but simply because it didn't seem possible that Sabrina had spoken them.

"What do you mean sweetie? I'm not crying," she had responded, reaching for Sabrina's hand intending to hurry her a long.

" Don't cry mommy."

"Twice she said that and after the second time, she smiled a little, this …small, knowing grin, almost as if she had gotten the answer…"

"The answer to what?" Stephen asked, and Sam could hear the emotions she herself was feeling heavy in his words.

"The answer to everything, the meaning of life, the meaning of death, the purpose of our being and the purpose of…the end."

After that she did drop, she simply folded like a house of cards, the lace on her tutu making a swishing sound as she spun her way to the floor.

"I… just stared at her for several seconds." Sam stated, brushing at her cheeks. "I just stood there…staring. Some part of me thought, I don't know, that she was joking, that it was some sort of game and I was waiting…I was waiting to hear her laugh, to see her smile as she climbed to her feet. "

"Get up Sabrina," she'd even told her, glancing around as a few people passed them, looking from Sam to the child on the floor before her.

"But…she didn't."

"After that everything…"

"Blurred?" Stephen asked, interjecting into her thoughts.

"I wish it had blurred," she responded. "But it didn't, in fact it all became clear, too clear in fact and slowed to a pace that was…almost maddening."

She had screamed, once she realized Sabrina wasn't getting up, she'd begun to scream, dropping to her knees beside her daughter and lifting her head into her lap. People had come then, gathering around them.

"I called 911," someone had told her.

"Is she alright?" A kind faced woman had asked her, looking near tears herself.

"She told me not to cry," Sam had responded.

From the mall they had traveled by ambulance to the hospital, but even before they had arrived at the door of the emergency room Sam had known the trip was futile, as had the lights and the sirens. Sabrina hadn't moved, wasn't going to move.

"By the time Dan got there and my parents…she was…she was gone."

She fell back into silence then, crying softly for a time, knowing that her emotions were simply wasting her reserve of precious energy but unable to stop herself.

"Do you believe in God Sam?"

"I did," she responded honestly, thinking of all the time she had spent as a child in church and Sunday school, all the prayers she had mumbled to the dark before falling asleep, all the times she had turned to great powers above in moments of need. She stopped praying after Sabrina however and now, now there were times when she found herself wondering why she had even bothered in the first place.

"There's something I need to tell you and…I know it doesn't have anything to do with anything we are talking about and in bringing it up I am in no way glossing over the pain you are feeling at having to relive that moment over again."

"What is it?" She whispered, wanting to gloss over the pain again, to let it go not just for the moment but forever though she alone knew that was impossible.

"I have never told anyone this, not Cecily, not my parents, not my friends, not even Stuart and of everyone in my life Stuart knows more about me than most."

He had piqued her curiosity by that point and absently she turned in his direction, wiping tears from her cheeks with hands that no longer felt attached to her.

"I'm listening," she urged him, when for several seconds he said nothing.

"I didn't jump off that dormitory roof because of a dare," he stated, and at first she found herself a little confused by his words then the reality hit her and hit was the only word for it, as she literally felt for a moment as if someone had slugged her a good one in the stomach.

"I climbed up there at the urgings of my friends, we were all drunk, wasted, they kept saying do it Stephen do it and…I figured what the hell, I'll climb up and come back down. But…"

"You tried to kill yourself," she blurted out, and again he fell silent.

"I'm not even sure why," he finally continued, sounding pained. "As far as lives went, mine wasn't all that bad at the time. I mean… I was eighteen, in my first year of college. I was having fun, living it up, everything was going great."

"So…what was it then?" Sam asked.

"I don't know. I mean I got up there and all my friends were down below, cheering, calling my name, and instead of simply climbing back down I walked to the edge of that roof and I looked out over the city, or at least the parts of it I could see. It was like…suddenly everything became so insignificant as compared to the beauty I saw from that perspective and the longer I stood there, the more insignificant it all became, until…until…I had convinced myself that nothing I ever did, nothing I ever saw or tried would ever come close to that moment in time. It would all pale, all be overshadowed by that starry night when the world became nothing more than a glimmer of twinkling lights in the distance. Stupid huh."

"Yeah well, you were a kid and you were drunk," Sam offered up to him.

"I wasn't all that drunk," he admitted softly. " I might have been when I started up but by the time I reached the top whatever buzz I had had long since faded. I was stone cold sober when I made that leap. No one knows that but you."

"Why me? Why, after all this time, would you share that secret with me? You don't know me and if it wasn't for the fact that we were both here on this road tonight, we would have spent the rest of our lives as strangers, all but oblivious to the others problems, life, existence."

"Yeah, that might be true, but we are here, for whatever reason whether that be God or fate or some twisted gypsy destiny…we are here and I…I wanted you to know Sam, to know that we all lose our way in life, sometimes, more than once. We are all looking for that path, that tunnel that leads to happiness. It's not a question of if we find it, it's a question of when and whether or not we can recognize it once we have."

"I think I did find it Stephen, for one brief moment, I think I did and it slipped through my grasp."

"Are you sure about that?" He sounded closer, a lot closer and Sam opened her eyes, realizing that at some point as he had shared with her that secret she had squeezed them shut. What she saw before her was not the face of the man she had spent the entire night speaking to, a stranger, it was instead the face of a friend, a true friend.

"How did you get over here?" She asked him softly, helpless but to smile as she took in the sight of him for the first time. She did recognize him now that she saw him and not from any movie, not from any news clipping or gossip rag, she had seen him before, just once, just for a brief instant, in a dream somewhere perhaps, a long faded, long forgotten dreams.

"I crawled," he admitted with a weak smile.

"That must have hurt like hell. Why would you do that?"

"Because…I had to know. I had to be certain that you were real and not just a figment of my imagination."

"I'm real, trust me on that."

Sam's eyes scanned the wound on his head, it was raw and oozing, deep enough so that she could nearly see the white of his skull, it sickened her a little but she forced herself to hide her nausea and the fear that came with it.

"I never believed in God," he stated, reaching out to her and she met him halfway, extending her hand, feeling his chilly fingers grasp lightly, then tighten. " My parents tried to make me believe in him, they took me to church, they read me the bible now and then. They weren't overly religious or anything, they just…they wanted me to have something to believe in, something they considered real, tangible, something other than this world, something beyond it."

"I think I understand," she responded softly.

"Anyway I didn't believe, not until I woke that day in the infirmary and found Cecily staring down at me. That was the first time I found myself thinking what if…"

"And after all you've been through, after all you have suffered, you still believe?"

"I'm still here, for whatever reason, I am still here. I might not have always wanted to be, in fact, there have been moments…." he drifted off for a second and she could see he was a million miles away in that instant. "There were moments that I recall begging, literally begging to be taken away. "

He met her eyes at that and for a long time she simply stared into his gaze, not blinking, not looking away, trying to find that power to believe in their depths, the power that had so eluded her all her life and still seemed so far out of her grasp.

"What if this is it Stephen? What if no one ever finds us and we…?" She swallowed hard this word, unable to speak it aloud though the possibility of it coming to be seemed far more real then the possibility of the two of them being stumbled upon by some lost and wayward traveler who, like her had taken a wrong turn. "Will you go feeling as if you had accomplished everything in this life you wanted to accomplish?"

"No and I doubt anyone truly does." He stated. He was thinking of Nathan, some how, some way, she knew this.

"I want you to promise me something Stephen," she whispered. "Actually I want you to promise me two things."

"Oh now you are just getting greedy aren't you?" He teased, though there was no humor in his eyes, in fact he looked close to tears.

"Promise me first of all, that you will forgive yourself for what happened here tonight or last night."

"I'm not sure I can make that promise Sam," he stated, and without a sound he began to weep. It hurt her to see him cry, in spite of the fact that she had heard him weep several times during the long night, it was different somehow seeing him do it and it didn't take much of a stretch of Sam's imagination to picture him up on the big screen, wringing every ounce of emotion out of those in the audience.

"Stephen, we don't always get to control the paths our lives take, whether it's a wrong turn, a right turn, or a dead end, all we can do is learn from those journeys and go on."

"Now that's spoken like a true trooper," he quipped.

"Promise me." she insisted, ignoring his attempt at levity.

"I…I promise to try," he offered, and after a moment had passed Sam nodded deciding it was probably as close as she was going to get to an actual promise under the circumstances. "And what's the second thing?'

"Go see your son."

"I'm not sure I can or should for that matter. It's too late now, don't you think?"

"I think you owe him the chance to tell you he hates you"

"Well that bloody well sounds awful," he responded, releasing her hand for a moment and running it over his hair, wincing as he made contact with the wound on his forehead.

"Yeah, it does. But until he gets the chance to hate you he can never have the chance to get past that hate and forgive you."

He reached for her hand again, holding it tightly, grasping at it in fact as if he were drowning and she was the only thing keeping him afloat.

"Alright I promise, but you have to make me a promise as well."

"Fair enough, what is it?"

"Promise me you'll tell your mother she was right."

"About what?" She questioned hastily.

"About everything she was ever right about."

The laugh escaped from Sam before she could stop it.

"Are you kidding me?" She asked, continuing to laugh though doing so left her breathless and more than a little lightheaded.

"No I'm not kidding. You have to tell her she was right about Dan, about you, about everything she was ever right about and you were simply too stubborn to admit to."

"If I do that Stephen, she will never let me live it down."

"No, if you do that I'm willing to bet that the two of you will have those moments, the ones she always wanted you to share, the ones you have been so afraid of your entire life."

She opened her mouth to argue this, but found she couldn't do so, that arguing was beyond her for the time being. Stephen had nailed her on this, had hit a bulls eye with this remark and Sam knew it. She was afraid, afraid that if she opened up to her mother, shared her life, shared the pain she still carried over Sabrina, over Dan and Carl and everything else screwed up in her often retched existence, that for the first time ever that load would be lightened around her heart and she would have no reason to continue being miserable, all that would be left for her is the ever elusive chance at happiness.

"Promise me," he persisted, and with a sigh Sam turned to face him once more.

"Alright… I…. promise, but when she is knee deep in my life and wallowing further I will be cursing you for it."

"I can accept that," he said with a grin. "As a matter of fact, I am prepared to apologize to you every time you call me up and tell me thanks a lot."

"Who says I'll call you?" She asked.

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Why would I? I mean…you're this big star, this famous actor and I'm just…a failed writer, a substitute teacher, a nobody."

"Being famous don't make you somebody," he responded to this seriously. "I was somebody with Cecily. I was somebody when I was Nathan's father in more than just a name. I'm somebody right this minute and not because my name is on some marquee light, but because I am here, holding your hand, listening to you talk about your daughter."

His words touched her deeply, so much so that all she could do in the end was swallow hard her own tears and hold his hand.

"You know what's funny?" He went on. "I used to believe that the best moments of my life were those that I spent before the camera and now…looking back, I realize they weren't the best moments, they weren't even real. The best moments were in fact those that at the time seemed unimportant, the sound of my son's laugh, Cecily's smile, the look on my mother's face when I did something that made her laugh, the pride in my father's eyes. Maybe…maybe that's really what I recognized that night on that dorm roof, the truth I didn't want to face, that life would be a series of moments that I wouldn't bother to cherish until it was too late for me to do so."

Sam had begun to drift, she could feel it happening, like a creeping wave, the pull of unconsciousness began to fill her inside and before long she could no longer fight it.

"Sam," she heard Stephen call her name from what seemed a great distance, then silence.

"Who says wolves have to be bad?"

"Well they're always bad in all the stories."

Sam knew she was dreaming, the instant she opened her eyes she knew she was having some sort of vivid recollection as all at once she found herself standing in the kitchen of the house she and Dan had purchased just months before their daughter had been born.

"It's gonna mean a lot of sacrifices," he had told her seriously the day they had toured the three bedroom, two bath bungalow. They had just been starting out then, money had been tight, both of them were working and with a little scrimping they had managed to put aside a small nest egg as a down payment. This particular house was a little more than what they had originally intended to pay and yet the first instant Sam had seen it she had fallen in love with it.

The kitchen had been one of her favorite rooms. It was always so bright and warm in there, plus it had big windows that overlooked the lake not far from their place and even before Sabrina had been born Sam used to spend hours in there just sitting , watching the sunlight play upon the surface of the water, trying to figure out how she had gotten so lucky as to end up with a life that was so close to perfect. She had believed in God then, believed with every part of her being.

"What stories?" On this day she and Sabrina had been making cookies for the school bake sale. Sam had never been exactly proficient when it came to cooking, but she loved doing it nonetheless especially when Sabrina was there to help her.

"The three little pigs for one. Little Red Riding Hood, the Gingerbread man, wolves are always bad. Don't you know that mommy?"

They had been talking and laughing when Dan came home that afternoon. Somehow in the midst of her and Sabrina's activity, he had managed to slip in unnoticed or unseen and after a time Sam had looked up to find him watching the two of them, a smile on his face, a look in his eyes that had been so warm, so full of love that even years later it touched her to recall it.

"Is this a private baking party or can anyone join?" He had asked.

"Come on Daddy, we're making chocolate chips," Sabrina had urged him, and before long the three of them were elbow deep in cookie batter.

"This is how it should always be." Dan had whispered to her at some point.

"This is how it should always be."

When the dream began to fade Sam clung to it, reaching out to grasp it, knowing there was no way in truth to truly hold on to this moment. Everything had changed, Sabrina was gone, Dan was lost to her, even the house was gone, sold in the months following her and Dan's divorce.

It occurred to her all at once, even as the last shreds of the joy from that moment began to wane that this was the last time she, her daughter and her husband had been together truly together as a family. In the days that followed, Dan would begin to distance himself for reasons she never felt strong enough to pursue and in the midst of that, Sabrina would be cruelly snatched away, taken before she truly had a chance to live.

"Sam, open your eyes."

From what seemed a great distance Sam heard these words, they were followed by a sharp sting on her cheek that very quickly drew her back to reality and hastily she opened her eyes to find Stephen staring at her, his bloody face lined with tears.

"Oh thank God," he whispered, lowering his head a little. "Thank God," he repeated. "You…were gone for a moment there. I thought…I thought…"

"Sorry, I paid a little visit to the past but, I'm back now," she whispered, certain she was making no sense, but unable to help that. She felt tired, more so than she could ever recall feeling in her life in fact and with a soft sigh she closed her eyes, only to have Stephen slap her lightly on the cheek once more.

"Stay with me," he urged her when she looked at him once more, he wasn't asking, he was begging, his eyes, eyes that she now saw were an odd shade of blue, full of fear and concern.

"I'm not going anywhere. I just…I need a nap," she was drifting yet again before she even got these words out of her mouth, drifting back to that warm kitchen, to the smell of chocolate chip cookies, to the moment when everything in the universe seemed to align.

"This is how it should always be."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

"Sam."

Once more Stephen slapped her across her cheek, wincing at the sound of flesh meeting flesh but unlike the other two times there was no response this time and hastily he reached forward pressing his fingers to her neck, holding his breath as he waited for the flutter of her heartbeat beneath his fingertips.

"Thank God," he whispered once more as it came to him, not strong and sure, but low and slow. Some part of him knew that she was slipping away, little by little and the thought of losing her filled him with a fear that couldn't be named.

"I'm not gonna let you die," he whispered, uncertain whether or not in her current state she could even hear him, just needing to make this vow yet again. The problem was he had no idea how to keep this from happening and with a growing sense of frustration he pulled himself back through the missing windshield of the rental car and cast a scan yet again around the clearing.

"Did I ever tell you I was a Ranger Scout?" He asked aloud, as his eyes came to rest on the twisted remains of his jag. In his mind's eye he conjured up a mental picture of where precisely his cell phone might be amidst the damage. It had rung for the last time nearly a half hour before, fifteen rings and he'd simply listened to the sound thinking it ironic all the times he had heard his cell phone go off and cursed it as an intrusion.

"It was my father's idea, me being a ranger scout. He…he kept telling me it would be a good experience for me, character building was how I think he put it and basically, what it was was a bunch of kids sitting around a plastic fire every Wednesday, tying knots and learning which side the moss grew on trees."

As he spoke Stephen began crawling, dragging his legs behind him as if they were merely attached but not really a part of him which, unfortunately, was precisely how they had come to feel, useless, worthless, wooden, and completely without life. He hadn't bothered to examine these sensations in a long time and as he slowly made his way from Sam's car and toward his own, he quickly decided to continue ignoring the possibilities of the bleak future his unfeeling limbs might mean for him.

"Anyway, once a year the Ranger Scouts had this huge jamboree, groups from all over the county met at this campground outside the city and during this get together we got to show all the skills we had learned since the last year, stuff like building shelters out of branches, starting fires without the aid of matches, foraging for food."

Inch by inch he crept forward, keeping his sights upon the chrome bumper of his car, a bumper he had paid a hefty amount for as it had not been standard, had been considered a part of the luxury package.

"I was rubbish when it came to nearly everything. I couldn't get my fire to go, my shelters always collapsed, and nine times out of ten when I picked berries while we were foraging they were the kind you weren't supposed to eat. I had explosive diarrhea for nearly a week after one jamboree." He laughed a little at this, remembering that he had gotten a week off of school because of it. "So I decided to quit," he continued to speak, telling the tale for his own amusement as much as Sam's. "I told my Dad I was done, that I wasn't going back, wasn't wasting any more time with the Ranger Scouts and let me explain my father to you, because I don't really think, thus far that I have spoken of him that much."

Stephen paused, wiping at his brow with his hand and immediately regretting that as his wounded forehead began to sting from the perspiration.

"Of my parents, my father was the quiet one. He seldom spoke, rarely corrected me, he left the disciplining to my mum as well as the lectures. So when he did speak I knew to listen because it meant more coming from him. Know what I mean?"

Again Stephen paused, this time to cast a glance back toward the rental car, unable to help but feel disappointed as he found he had, despite his efforts, only gone no more than a few feet away from it in the direction of his own wrecked auto.

"Anyway I don't remember exactly what he said word for word but it was somewhere along the lines of it being easier to quit than to persevere and how before long quitting became a habit. I don't know…but it was meant to motivate me nonetheless and…."

Stephen paused for a moment, glancing back toward Sam's car once more. He had only gone a little bit further than the last time he had looked and yet he couldn't help himself but to turn back as suddenly he was filled with the notion that she had passed on, that he would crawl back and place his fingers on her neck and this time there would be pulse whatsoever.

"I quit anyway," he continued with the story, in spite of the lump of dread that had risen inside of him and now threatened to choke the very life from him. "I…pretended to go to the meetings but …instead I spent that hour hiding out in our shed, eating chocolate bars and reading comics."

He was crying now, unable to help himself, torn between wanting to crawl back to check on Sam and wanting to reach his car though he had yet to figure how he was going to pull himself up long enough to actually search for and locate the cell phone.

"I kept up with the lie for nearly a month," he pushed forward, brushing absently at the tears on his face as he ignored his insistent need to go back and check on Sam, quickly deciding one way or another the phone needed to be found and under the circumstances, considering how weak he was beginning to feel, this might be his only chance. "Before long it came time for the jamboree and I was beside myself trying to figure out what I was going to do. I mean hiding out in the shed was all well and good for an hour or so at a time, but there was no way I could do it for three days." Once more he paused, this time to catch his breath and he forced himself to look only toward the jag that suddenly loomed above him like a shiny idol of worship.

"My mum packed my bags, all my gear, my sleeping bags etc. Then my father told me to get in the car, that he would drive me to where the buses were to pick up the scouts. So there I am in the front seat, sweating bullets as he pulls away from our house, knowing the trip should only take a few moments and that once we arrived there the entire lie I had been living for nearly a month was going to blow up in my face."

Stephen had reached the car and for several long minutes he merely lay there, breathing hard from the effort of dragging himself, staring up at the underbelly of his vehicle.

"I was scared, petrified, which is probably why it took me so long to notice that instead of making the turn toward where the buses were my father had gone the other way."

A quick glance around offered nothing of help for Stephen and with a sigh he looked once more toward the jag above him, extending his arm toward the custom chrome bumper.

"We were about twenty minutes away from our house by the time I took a long look around."

"Where are we?" He had asked his father, who had only smiled back at him saying nothing. "Dad, where we going?" Again his father had remained silent and Stephen could recall the taste of his own fear as his father drove them further and further away from the city, into the country, into an area of England that was rough and secluded.

"I guess by then I was starting to think that my dad had lost his mind, that somehow he had learned about the lie and was taking me out to kill me or something." He laughed at his own words as began to pull himself from the ground, sweating profusely now.

"My dad was the kindest gentlest man who ever lived. He wouldn't even hurt a fly, so that should tell you how wildly out of control my imagination was by that point. Before long he pulls off the main road and into the trees, then stops all together, getting out of the car without so much as a word."

Even before it happened, Stephen could feel his hand beginning to slip off the bumper. He reached up with the other, grasping the cold chrome but it was no use and roughly he landed back on the ground jarring his head in such a way that for several seconds his vision swam and nausea welled up inside of him.

"I just sat there frozen in my seat, breathing hard, my heart pounding as he walks around to my side of the car and opens my door staring at me long and hard for several seconds, then he says…"

"Get your gear out Stephen and make camp."

"I didn't ask any questions, I just scrambled out, grabbed my stuff and started doing precisely what he asked, making camp. Within no time I had erected a lean to, started a fire, even gathered water from the nearby stream and the entire time my dad is just standing there watching me."

Once more Stephen made a grab for the bumper, locking on to it and beginning to pull with everything he had inside of him. He felt the muscles of his arm strain, but he held on, dragging himself up from the ground and planting his feet.

"When I was done, when I had finished doing as he asked, he walks over and kneels in front of me and gives me this smile and that's when I broke. I just…started crying and before long I had babbled out the whole story about me quitting the scouts and hiding out in the shed and when I was done I looked at him and he was still smiling. That's when I realized that he knew all along."

Slowly and carefully Stephen lurched forward on legs that seemed to be beyond his body's control. He held to the car as if it meant his very life and in some ways he was certain it did.

"What was harder Stephen, Ranger Scouts or living with a lie?"

"The lie I told him," Stephen said through clenched teeth as he had reached the window of the jag or at least the empty hole where the window had once been. The inside of his vehicle looked scarcely marred which seemed impossible considering all the other damage the vehicle had suffered. Within seconds he spotted the phone lying on the floorboard of the passenger side and made a grab at it, brushing it with the tops of his fingers and nearly toppling himself in the process. For several seconds after this initial attempt he merely stood there gathering his strength, what little he had left and preparing himself for one more chance as he was certain, absolutely certain, that that was all he had left in him, one more chance.

"Now or never," he mumbled to himself finally, and with a deep breath he again made a grab for the phone, this time closing his fingers around it so tightly he was almost certain he would crush the tiny device in the process. But he didn't, and the instant his arm cleared the window he collapsed yet again to the ground, exhaling the breath he had been holding.

A quick scan told him he was low on battery power, though not so low that he truly needed to worry about this. It also told him that he had seven missed calls, all from the same number, one he couldn't immediately place. With shaking hands he punched in the three numbers that might mean Sam's and his very life, waiting as he heard it ring, once then twice.

"911 emergency response."

"We've had an accident," he began, and before long he found himself babbling nearly incoherently as he looked toward Sam's rental car.

"Where exactly are you Mr. Morgan?" The operator asked him, and he sighed softly, running a hand over his tear stained face.

"I…I can't say for certain," he said, explaining as best as he could about the rural road and the fact that they had gone off the side.

"Sit tight sir, help is on the way."

He hung up after that and immediately began to crawl back toward the rental car, a little frightened as to what he might find once he got there, certain that Sam was dead.

"Sam," he whispered as he crawled back through the broken windshield, lifting a hand to touch her face, the skin of which was chilled slightly. "Sam," he said once more, emotions breaking through and making themselves known in his voice.

"So…how'd it end?" She suddenly asked in a low voice, her eyes never opening.

"How'd what end?" He cried, relieved to hear her speak, more relieved than he had ever been before in his life.

"That day…with your father, the camping?" Slowly she looked at him then and whatever strength and resolve he might have had left crumbled and broke inside of him. It was a truly beautiful sight, her eyes fixing on him, inside them the spark of life though dim somehow not yet extinguished.

"We spent the entire weekend out there, just my dad and I and when we returned home my father told my mum I was done with the ranger scouts, that I had passed all the tests I needed to pass."

"Your dad…sounds like a good man," she whispered, a fresh line of blood appearing from her lips and making its way up the side of her face.

"He was…he is. There are a million people in this world that others consider heroes, but…if I had my wish, if I could be like anyone, I would give all I have to be half the man that he is."

"You…sell yourself too short Stephen," she stated softly.

Once again Stephen lifted a hand in her direction, this time wiping away the blood from the side of her mouth, his hand brushing back her hair as well.

"I…I called for help," he told her. "Someone should be here shortly…you just…you need to hang on Sam. Can you do that?'

"I'm trying," she assured him, and he knew she was, knew it was taking everything she had just to keep her eyes open, just to keep herself awake and semi alert.

"Tell me something Sam, earlier, right before you passed out you said you paid a visit to the past but you were back now. Where…where did you go?"

A smile crossed her lips as she closed her eyes for several minutes before finally opening them yet again.

""I…I went home," she said. "The last place that truly felt like home to me that is"

"Tell me about it," Stephen urged her, wanting to keeping her talking, needing to hear her voice, to know that she was there with him at least for the time being.

"Not…not much to tell really," she stated. "It wasn't much of a house, nothing big, nothing grand. Dan and I…well he called it our starter house. He had all sorts of plans as to how he wanted it to look… repairs he was going to make, new carpets, wallpaper, stuff like that. He… never got around to much, but…it was a nice place anyway, warm, homey." She paused looking past him it seemed, into the distance, to a place he couldn't see, to a memory he could have privy to but never truly understand. "Anyway…we, lived there until after Sabrina…then…we sold it or rather Dan sold it. What I was remembering was one of the last moments we shared as a family."

Stephen suddenly found the hand of time turning backwards inside of him, back to before Cecily had fallen ill, back to before Nathan had considered him a stranger who shared a name and very little else. There weren't many moments that the three of them had shared that might be considered the family type, fond and warm, but there were a few, a couple at least and for a time he found himself dwelling on them, not the events that brought them about but the feelings that went along with them, the sensation of being a part of something that was bigger, much bigger than anything he would ever be alone.

"I think… the hardest part of losing someone Stephen isn't remembering all the things that you shared in the past… it's thinking instead of all the moments that might have been," Sam whispered, reaching out with her hand to take his.

"Yeah, I think you are right on that," he responded.

"If…if I die here tonight Stephen," he looked at her then, feeling horrified that she would say this, even more horrified by the fact that he could almost imagine it happening as she was that bad off, that damaged. "If I die here," she said once more. "You will be my biggest regret."

"What do you mean?" He whispered softly, already sensing the answer but needing to hear her say it, needing to hear her speak the words aloud.

"What if," she continued, smiling in a weary, almost exhausted way. "How many times in your if have you asked yourself that question, what if?"

He didn't have to think hard to find the answer to this. Everyday, for a thousand different reasons, he had posed this query in his mind though more often than not he had done so only as a means of further punishing himself for his own failings and foibles.

"It…it always seems though that we ask in regards to the bad things. What if I had done something differently, what if I had said this or that, what if I hadn't made that choice, or gone to that place, or…took that turn…"

"…answered that call, took my eyes from the road, been in such of a hurry?" He interjected his own what ifs into her list.

"Maybe, with you, for the first time ever I could have asked the question what if and the answers would have been possibilities instead of…"

"…regrets," he finished for her, finally seeing the point that she had been attempting to make, seeing it so clearly in fact that after a time he had to force himself to look elsewhere.

"I wish we had met before this moment." he stated softly, without hesitation, without the need to think on it further. In the hours they had shared, hours they had both suffered through mentally and physically, speaking to Sam had awoken him in ways that he was absolutely certain he would never again be awoken. He had begun to examine his life, to closely look at it, flaws and all, forcing himself to see the places where he had been lacking, the parts where he had failed.

"Destiny works in mysterious ways," she stated with a soft smile.

"I haven't always been a happy man Sam, as you have no doubt gathered," he told her, gripping her hand tightly in his own. "I pretended to be, because that's what I do, I pretend." He paused, taking a deep breath before meeting her gaze once more. "But…the truth is, the real truth I bury deep inside me, is that I am but a shell, empty, hollow, lacking at times… most times."

"Again I think you sell yourself too short." she whispered.

"No…not on this I don't," he stated seriously. "It's easy, really easy to let tragedy drain the very will to live from you. I know that, you know that as well."

To this she said nothing, merely averted her eyes for a moment before turning back to him once more.

"And once it's gone or at least buried too deeply to feel, existing, merely sleepwalking through every day becomes as normal to one as breathing. That's…that's what I have been doing you know…sleepwalking. I might have continued to do so for the rest of my days had it not been for this…our fateful meeting and…you."

She chucked a little at this, before falling silent once more, her eyes fluttering as if they were weighted and nearly too heavy for her to keep open.

"Stay with me Sam," he told her in a low voice, and for a moment he was uncertain if she had even heard him, but a faint glimmer of a smile crossed her lips and once more her eyes opened to fix upon him.

"I am trying Stephen," she assured him, and he nodded his head slightly, instantly regretting this.

"I know you are, which makes you one of the strongest people I have ever known, as strong as Cecily ever was."

"Tell me something else Stephen, something like that story about your dad, something a little more uplifting than what we have been discussing for much of the night."

"I have a tattoo," he blurted out, and she opened her eyes yet again. "No one knows about that. Cecily was the only person who ever saw it and trust me I have gone to great lengths to keep it hidden from everyone else."

"Where is it?" She asked.

"On my bum," he told her, pleased by the laughter these words pulled from her.

"What's the tattoo?"

"I'm gonna tell you, but promise me first you won't hurt yourself laughing once I have."

"Alright, I promise," she responded, and Stephen sighed softly.

"It says…your name," he told her, waiting for her reaction to this.

"What do you mean it says my name?"

"It says your name…not Sam, but the words, your name." She began to laugh then, just as he had expected she would and for several seconds he let it wash over him, memorizing it, wanting never to forget what it sounded like though he refused to allow himself to admit just why it was he felt the need to do this.

"Why on earth would you get something like that on your ass? And why haven't you had it lasered off?"

"I was a kid, fifteen I think, drunk , at a party, and this guy starts talking about his skills as a tattoo artist. Anyway one thing lead to another and the next thing I know I was waking up with a plaster on my ass cheek and beneath it was your name."

"And you kept it why?"

"To remind myself of how stupid and out of control I once was and never want to be again."

Before he realized it, he had ventured back into territory he had been hoping to avoid and even before Sam spoke once more he already had a sense as to what she was going to ask him.

"How long were you an alcoholic?" She asked, and he sighed softly once more.

"I'm still an alcoholic Sam. Alcoholism is the gift that keeps on giving unfortunately. Even if I never touch another drop it will always be with me. But I stopped drinking about two years ago, thanks to Stuart."

"Ah Stuart again."

"Yeah Stuart again. He saw through what no one else had or what everyone else chose not to."

"I know what's going on Stephen and you can stand there and lie to my face if you want to, it won't change anything, because I know you better than I know myself."

It had been a difficult moment for Stephen, as difficult as any he had faced before save for Cecily's death and the days following Nathan's dismissal. There he'd been face to face with the only person who had truly stuck by him through every heartbreak, triumph, tragedy and joy in his life, the only person he had allowed to be there in truth. Admitting to him he had a problem wasn't easy for Stephen and Stuart hadn't made any attempt at making any less difficult. Tough love he had called it and it had worked.

"You think you have it all under control, that you can handle it and maybe in some ways you can. But look at what it's doing to you Stephen, seriously. Take a good long look at yourself in the mirror and I'm not talking about the face you see there, I'm talking about the soul that lies beneath. You are rotting from the inside out and it's just a matter of time before the decay shows itself to everyone.

"Fuck you Stuart, it isn't all that bad," he had argued with his friend, not because the words he spoke weren't true, but because by then being a drunk and keeping it under wraps were things Stephen felt secure in, one of the only things he was absolutely certain he could do without having to try all that hard.

"You're right, it isn't all that bad I suppose. I mean, it's not as if you have any reason to live for am I right? I mean Cecily's gone, Nathan's elsewhere, your career has reached a point where you could step in shit and win an Emmy for it. Everyone loves you Stephen and because of that the fact that you are an alcoholic doesn't really matter to any of them. They'll accept it, embrace it , even if you dropped dead tomorrow, who cares am I right? At least you'll die doing what you want to do, being what you want to be, because this is what you want Stephen right? You want to spend whatever time you have left chained to a bottle, craving the oblivion it brings you, aching with the need for it, pretending to control it, when in truth it controls you."

"I punched Stuart for that," Stephen admitted, feeling his face warm at the thought of that moment. It was rock bottom for him, the lowest point in which one person could fall and still be able to pull himself back up and climb out. "I think it was hitting him more so than anything he said that made me realize how right he was. After that, I checked myself into a clinic. It was the single most difficult thing I had ever had to do, but afterwards when I walked out of there, clean for the first time in years, I realized that numbing the pain hadn't made it go away, it had only left me numb. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I do," she assured him softly. "I take it Stuart forgave you for hitting him."

"Oh yeah. Stuart's not one to hold a grudge. He just hit me back one day out of the blue and after that he considered us even."

"I think I like this Stuart, rational and practical, not to mention a little violent."

"He's a great guy. I'll introduce the two of you after…." he paused, looking at her, at the smile on her face that told him she didn't truly believe there was going to be a later for anything. For the time being he left it alone, just overlooked it.

"Tell me Stephen, what's it like?" She asked after a few moments of complete silence had passed between them.

"What's what like?"

"Being a star, what's it like?"

"I'm not a star Sam, stars possess a light and a beauty that lives on long after they themselves fade away. I'm merely an actor."

"I lied to you about something else, I have seen you in one of your movies."

Stephen was surprised to find this admittance embarrassed him and not for the reasons he was certain it should have. Usually when he was recognized, he was embarrassed merely because after all the years of being an actor, some part of him was still thrilled by the fact that total strangers thought they knew him. Hearing Sam say this embarrassed him in ways he had never felt before. Much of what he did, the characters he played, the roles he chose were selected not because they were going to move mountains or stir people's souls but simply because they would be drawn to the theaters. Being an actor, when it came right down to it, wasn't about interpreting life it was about making people forget for a time that life even existed. It all came down to the money much of the time, the willingness of the general public to shell out their hard earned cash for a chance to put aside their problems and worries for a short time.

"Which movie was it?" He asked, uncertain whether or not he wanted to truly know.

"I can't really remember the name of it right now, but I do know it was a comedy, had to do with a bank heist or something."

He remembered the role and found himself blushing all the more.

"Why do I get the feeling I have just embarrassed you?" Sam asked, and he looked at her wanting to laugh off these words but unable to do so.

"I can do better than that," he stated seriously.

"I didn't say it was a bad movie," she assured him hastily.

"No, I did. It was a bad movie, a little too cheeky, a little to lighthearted. That…that wasn't the type of movie I set out to do when I dreamed about being an actor."

"So…why then?"

"You really do ask some difficult questions you know," he teased her lightly, though it wasn't entirely teasing.

"Sorry."

"Let me ask you something before I attempt an answer. You said you published one book that was crap and the second one you were working on before this trip was most likely crap as well. If you know, or at least believe you can do better, then why not simply do it? Why bother putting crap on paper at all?"

Sam averted her eyes at this seeming to think on it for a time and silently Stephen waited, absolutely certain that once she answered he would have his answer as well.

"Because writing crap as you so eloquently put it, is easier than reaching deep inside of myself and pulling out thoughts and feeling that are too difficult for me to face."

He gave her a look that no doubt said exactly and in response she smiled a little.

"I have it in me Sam, just as you no doubt have it in you, to do precisely what we haven't done thus far…move mountains and stir souls. Some part of us is afraid am I right, afraid of waking those demons, afraid of stirring the giant, just…afraid."

"Touché, I guess I had that one coming."

"Other than the fact that the movie you saw was superfluous and basically a fluff piece, what was your opinion?" He teased, causing her to laugh once more.

"Other than that, it was wonderful."

"Which is kind of like saying after you've been shot, other than this big smoking hole in my chest, I'm just fine," he stated, using his earlier thought.

"You can do better Stephen and I can't help but think that after this, you will."

But Stephen wasn't as certain of this as she seemed to be. In fact some part of him had already begun to think about getting out of the game, leaving it behind, moving on or perhaps back to a life that had a little more meaning. He was thinking now of Nathan, more so than he had in the past nine years and for the first time, in a very long time, he found himself wanting to know the young man the small boy had become.

"He at least deserves the chance to hate you." Sam's words came back to him from their earlier conversation and some part of him had agreed with them then and even more so in recollect. He did deserve the right to hate him and maybe that was all he ever would do, but having himself be hated by his child, by Cecily's child might be a lot better than having himself be but a shadow, a part of a past that Nathan couldn't and didn't want to recall.

"Your turn to tell me a story," Stephen stated, after pulling his self away from these thoughts of his son and the future that hung before him like a great question mark, uncertain for the first time in a long time.

"Sam," he turned to her when only silence followed his words and found her eyes had closed yet again. Hastily he reached forward and pressed fingers to the spot on her neck, exhaling shakily as he felt a pulse beneath his touch, again it as faint, slow and light, but there nonetheless.

"Sam," he called to her once more, wanting only to see her eyes yet again and as if on cue her lashes fluttered and she turned her gaze to him once more.

"Your turn to tell me a story," he said, oblivious to the tears on his cheek.

"I…I'm not sure I got another story in me," she admitted, beginning to drift off once more.

"You have, I know you have," he insisted, and once again she looked at him.

"I'm…afraid I'm dying Stephen."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

As difficult as it had been for Sam to so much as consider this notion hours earlier, saying these words aloud was easy, frighteningly easy in fact and to her surprise afterwards she felt a little relieved, almost as if it had been a huge secret she had been carrying and now had the strength and courage to reveal.

"Don't say that," Stephen snapped a little, looking more fearful then angry and with a smile she closed her eyes once more feeling herself drift before she even had the chance to realize it was happening.

Thus far she had revisited nearly every moment of her life, or at least the high or more to the fact low points, the one thing she had merely skimmed over, touched upon but not delved into was the subject of Carl.

"He killed himself." How callous and cold had this truly sounded when she had blurted this fact out to Stephen? In recollect it sounded like both, made it seem almost as if his death hadn't affected her in the least, that she had merely gathered her life around her once again in his absence and plodded on without a single tear, without a moment of regret or remorse. The truth was losing Carl had hurt her, a great deal more than anyone close to her was allowed to realize. Some part of her was certain her mom had recognized this fact however, though she had never come right out and asked, had merely danced around the edges of the subject.

"You kept his paintings," she had said one afternoon not long after Carl had been found dead in his bathtub, and Sam had followed her Mom's gaze to the canvas that hung on the wall over her couch, reading in it the secrets and hints that before she might have missed, secrets and hints that pointed to just how troubled Carl had been inside, just how tortured and broken he turned out to be.

"Well what was I gonna do, throw them away?" She had responded sharply, a little more sharply then she had wanted to and for that she had earned one of those knowing looks her mother was famous for.

"No, I just thought…I don't know, that it might be difficult to have such a big reminder around." Subtle was the best word, to describe her mom, but only subtle because sneaky seemed a little too brutal.

"I'm fine mom. How many times do I have to tell you that? I'm fine. Carl killed himself. He wasn't happy. It was his choice and dwelling on it isn't gonna change it. Am I right?"

"Yeah, you're right. I suppose."

"How did you meet Carl again?" Stephen asked all at once, and Sam opened her eyes a little surprised that she had been speaking aloud as she had been certain she was merely thinking these things to herself, drifting off in her memories, far from the crash scene, far from the pain and blood, far from Stephen for the time being.

"Carl was the art teacher at the school where I subbed," Sam stated. "He was one of those moody, sullen types, the kind who always looks as if they are ready to either cry or put their fist through a wall."

"Sounds like someone you would avoid rather than become involved with."

"I actually did avoid him, for a long time."

In those days Sam had been going about her life like an automaton basically. There were very little surprises in her routine. She was living alone in the aftermath of her and Dan's divorce and her breakdown over Sabrina, and this was how she chose things to be, structured, set, patterns that were easy for her to accept and deal with.

Meeting and becoming involved with Carl had not been part of the plan and though she liked to tell herself she hadn't been attracted to him right from the start, deep inside she knew the truth, that the instant she had laid eyes on him some part of her had reached out for some part of him.

"I think what I saw in him was a reflection of my own emotions, my pain, my fear, my anger, my sadness. It was all there in him. Which is probably why I went to such great lengths to steer clear of him."

But ignoring Carl became about as difficult as avoiding an itch, no matter how she tried to tell herself it wasn't there, it only made her want to scratch.

"Carl was very attractive first of all. He in fact had about a dozen girl's, freshman and up, who mooned after him everywhere he went. I never doubted that he was secretly the subject of more than one adolescent fantasy and I know for a fact he became the center of my fantasies for a time."

"You're that English teacher filling in for Mrs. Pine aren't you?" He had asked the first time the two of them had finally exchanged words. She had been eating her lunch in the cafeteria, keeping an eye on the kids while at the same time going over her class plan for the next few days.

"Yeah, I am. Samantha Reynolds."

"Carl Mathers, I teach art."

"Yeah I know. I've seen you around."

"Which to a man is code for I have already checked you out," Stephen interrupted, and in spite of her weariness Sam laughed a little at this because it was precisely the truth. By that point she had indeed checked Carl out, asked a few of the other teachers about him, most of which thought he was a little on the eccentric side.

"Which is a nice way of saying they thought he was nuttier than a fruitcake," she explained , and this time Stephen was the one to chuckle a little.

"Anyway we ate lunch together. He told me about his art, I told him about my writing. I'd like to say I continued to take things slow as far as Carl was concerned but…"

That afternoon the two of them made love for the first time. It had been wild, passionate, everything sex with Dan had not been for some time before their divorce had even happened.

"Sure, skim over the good parts," Stephen quipped.

"I'm only skimming because it's a little embarrassing for me to admit that I slept with the guy that quickly."

"Why? You were an adult, he was adult and it sounds to me like the two of you needed each other. What's wrong with that?"

"You don't even know him really." Her mother of course had found fault in her relationship with Carl right from the start, which was why Sam had gone to great lengths to hide it even after Carl had more or less moved in with her.

"She always had to be my protector," Sam stated, though she was surprised to realize that this trait of her mother's didn't anger her at that moment as it sometimes had in the past. In fact for the first time she was seeing it in a whole different light, not as her mother's attempt at controlling her, but as her mother's attempt at keeping her from harm.

"Did you love Carl, Sam?"

For a long time she didn't answer this, not because she had to think about it, but because admitting that her feelings had gone much deeper for Carl than anyone had realized including herself was hard. It opened the door to a lot of shadowed rooms that she had long since decided were best kept locked.

"There was this extra bedroom in my apartment and when Carl moved in, sort of moved in I mean as we never made it official by saying anything along those lines. Anyway we converted that room into a sort of studio. On one side near the window was my desk with my computer and my writing and on the other side was his canvases and paints and such. We'd spend hours in there, he'd paint, I'd write and sometimes we wouldn't say a word the entire time, we would just lose ourselves in our creativity."

At the time she had been working on a novel about loss, doing precisely what she had since shied away from doing, delving deep inside of her soul, touching on her own emotions and giving them voice. Had she ever finished this story it would have probably been the best she had ever written. But she had abandoned it, right about the time that Carl had abandoned her.

"I'm not really sure where it all went wrong," she stated softly, remembering the moment when things had begun to fall apart. "We…we got close," she went on to say, forcing herself to recall just how close they had truly become.

On some level her closeness to Carl had superseded anything she had ever had with anyone before including Dan who it sometimes seemed she had loved her entire life. With Carl it was if he saw past everything, every lie she had ever created about herself, every wall she had ever built for protection, every notion she had ever sought to fulfill, and every fantasy she had lived inside of her mind.

"He saw me for me, stripped naked, to the very depths of my being where no one else had ever sought to look and I gotta tell you at times it was a little frightening, that someone could know me that well, could feel what I was feeling, and sense what I was sensing."

She hadn't been the only one it had scared. Carl had been more than a little frightened as well. He had never told her as such, not until it was too late to talk about it, but even before she had read the note following his death, some part of her had recognized this already.

"He…started to avoid me then," she said, unable to help but smile a little at the irony of this. "I was no longer subbing, which made it easier for him to stay away from me."

He quit coming to her apartment and when she went looking for him at his, he was either not there or pretending he was elsewhere. Either way he didn't answer the door, didn't take her calls, didn't bother to call her back.

"I started feeling like a stalker, worse yet I felt like one of those moony freshman that always followed him around, so I just stopped…just… stopped calling him, just stopped trying to find him. I figured if it was meant to be, if we were meant to be, then sooner or later he would come around on his own."

He had finally come around, it had taken him a few weeks however, weeks in which Sam had just about decided she was never going to see him again.

"I was dealing with that," she told Stephen. "I was just starting to accept that it was over, that he had been just another chapter in my life and the time had come to turn the page and go on."

"I'm sorry." Those were the first and only words he had spoken that day when he showed up at her apartment out of the blue. After that words hadn't been necessary. The two of them made their way somehow to Sam's room and for hours they had made love.

"It was…almost as if it had never happened, almost as if he had never broken away from me," she whispered, not realizing she had begun to cry until she felt Stephen's hand upon her cheek, brushing away the tears.

"That was the last time the two of you were together was it not?" He asked in a low voice, and she nodded her head a little not trusting herself to words for the moment.

"We did finally get around to talking, somewhere right around dawn the next day," she went on to say when she had finally regained enough control to speak. "He didn't explain to me where he had been, why he had gone, what had made him pull away. He talked instead about how his life was a little like the painting he did."

"Much of it is dark Sam, full of bad memories, disappointments, heartbreak and pain. I thought it was meant to always be that way, then…I found a little light."

"Two days later I got a call from the super in his building…." she paused for a moment, remembering this call and just as quickly forcing herself to forget. "He called me a again after…after the funeral to see if I wanted to come over and go through Carl's belongings before the apartment was emptied and cleaned."

Sam hadn't gone though, had in fact told the guy there wasn't anything she wanted there.

"Why didn't you go? I mean weren't you curious to know what it was that had twisted the guy so completely inside that he felt the need to kill himself?"

"I was curious," she admitted. "In fact, I was extremely curious, but…"

She had been afraid, afraid that knowing would have changed her memories of Carl somehow and that was the last thing she wanted.

"When did you get the letter from him?"

"The next day." Her hands had been shaking when she realized who it was from, shaking so badly in fact that she had to wait nearly an hour before attempting to open it as she had been afraid she might rip it.

"He apologized of course, but not for killing himself really, it was more like he was apologizing for allowing me in and making me hurt for him the way I was already hurting for Sabrina and Dan."

"And he didn't tell you why, why he would do such a thing?"

"No."

Sam's curiosity eventually got the better of her though it took nearly a month for it to do so. Long enough for the shock to wear off and the sense of loss to set in.

"I did some checking on the net, at the school where he worked, stuff like that."

She managed to unlock a few doors, uncover a few skeletons.

"It turned out Carl's mom passed away in childbirth, his dad put him up for adoption. The people who took him in ran their foster home much like a puppy mill, in the sense that they gave the kids the basics, food, clothing, shelter, just enough to get by as if that's enough for any kid, the basics."

He had grown up in a completely loveless environment, and for someone like Carl, who seemed always to feel things on a deeper level, this must have been difficult.

"I guess, when it came right down to it, he just…didn't know how to be a part of what we were beginning to become. He said in his letter that the two weeks we were apart he had spent much of this time just walking the city, observing people, studying the way they interacted with one another and he had reached the conclusion that he was…never gonna be able to be like them, that something was missing in him, some key component that might have allowed him to feel and think about another person without fear or rejection."

"What a load of crap," Stephen commented dryly, and Sam opened her eyes and looked at him surprised to find he was dead serious.

"What do you mean?" She questioned.

"I mean…everyone has that fear Sam, everyone whether they were raised in a family that was loving or by a drunk uncle who abused them. We are all afraid that we lack what it takes to connect with another heart. He could have tried, he could have given it a chance, instead he took the easy way out and if you aren't a little angry about that then you are a fool because you have every reason to be."

Sam had in truth never looked at it this way, she had always been so wrapped up in the tragedy of it all, had perhaps even romanticized it though that notion seemed a little on the depraved side when she considered it.

"You deserved that risk on his part, you were worthy of that chance, and in the end he's the biggest fool of all, because he didn't see that, didn't recognize that fact."

"The man is dead Stephen," she stated finally, though it was a half hearted attempt at defense and he sighed a little angrily at these words.

"Yeah, he's dead and that is tragic but only in the sense that he left it to you to pick up the pieces afterwards knowing all you had already lost, knowing the pain you still carried. He left it to you to go on dealing with the emotions his suicide would create. Not only is a fool, but he's a selfish fool at that."

To this Sam said nothing, wisely choosing to reserve her energy and argue no further. In truth, very little of what Stephen said had prompted her to argue any further anyway. He was right, in a cold callous sort of way, he was dead right. Carl had taken the easy way out, though at the time it probably seemed anything but easy to him, and he had done it without a thought as to how it would make her feel afterwards or so it seemed.

"I'm sorry." After a time had passed, a short time in which Sam had spent much of it drifting in and out, contemplating, simply contemplating.

"Why?"

"I shouldn't have…gone off like that," he responded, turning to look at her once more, his eyes traveling over her face before locking with her own. "I just…it makes me angry you know, to hear about someone throwing it all away without ever having really made an attempt at life."

"In a sense, isn't that precisely what you and I have both done Stephen. I mean you take away the bathtub and the razor to our wrists, what you are still left with is two people who spent a good chunk of their lives dead inside and not because it had to be that way, because it was easier for us in the long run."

"Yeah but we …suffered losses…and…"

"Everyone suffers Stephen," she stated, turning his earlier words more or less back on him and instead of responding he merely looked away for a moment, seeming troubled.

"You know what, I really don't want to talk about this anymore," he stated brusquely, turning away from her a little, enough so that for a time she could not see his face, could not look into his eyes, could not guess what he might be feeling though she did sense he was a little angry, not at what she said, but at her for being right. Talk of Carl had bothered Stephen, and it wasn't until he refused to say nothing more about the man and his end that Sam truly realized why. It had more to do with his flight off the top of the dorm than it did with her and because of this she let the subject drop completely.

"I was never a scout," she began talking once more, overlooking the fact that he still would not so much as glance in her direction. "I thought about joining the girl scouts, but the truth is I hated camping, hated being out in the middle of nowhere without all the amenities, so I joined 4H instead."

"What's that?" He questioned.

"Basically it's like an agriculture program where kids learn about farming and raising farm animals and such. When I was 12 I got to raise a pig."

"You got to raise a pig?" He asked with a smile in his voice. "That sounds…bloody awful." He said with a chuckle, casting a glance toward her.

"No it wasn't actually. Believe it or not, pigs make great pets. I mean they're cute and smart and basically just lovable creatures who want nothing more than to be fed and to have a place where they can roll around, preferably a muddy place."

"Still sounds bloody awful," he quipped.

"I named him Caesar and don't ask me why because I have no idea. He just…looked like a Caesar."

"That makes sense." Stephen had turned to face her once more as she spoke.

"We got him as a starter pig, my parents paid like fifty dollars for him and the whole idea of the project was for me to raise him, care for him, and when the fair came around he would be auctioned off and we would get to keep the proceeds."

"Alright I'm with you so far."

"So I spent months taking care of him. Every morning before school I would ride my bike up to the 4H barn, spend a half an hour feeding him and watering him and such. Then after school I would do the same thing. It was a lot of work but…I loved that pig, he was just so friendly and he was always so happy to see me every time I arrived. He'd follow me around while I made up his slop and when he was done eating he would come over to me wanting his ears scratched."

"You must have had a wonderful scent during this period of your life," he joked.

"Well, it wasn't like I had all that many friends anyway, and I was a tomboy so…" She shrugged a little as if to say it didn't matter, while at the same time recalling how she had gotten picked on quite a bit about smelling like a pig.

"Is Porky your boyfriend?" One kid had asked her and it wasn't until years later that she had realized that kid was Dan. She never mentioned it to him later on in life, nor did he ever bring it up, but the hurt and humiliation from his words had stayed with her for a long time and in the end had mingled with all the emotions he had caused inside of her.

"So what happened, to the pig I mean? I'm assuming eventually he was sold off."

"He was, first day of the livestock auction as a matter of fact. We got five hundred dollars for him which just about covered half of the expenses we shelled out in raising him. Everyone was thrilled, it was one of the highest sales on record and that entire day I was on cloud nine."

The next day she had come to the fair on her own intending to ride all the rides and eat until she puked as it was the first time her parents had felt comfortable letting her go solo.

"At the front gate, near the ticket booth they had this huge barbecue pit set up, every year they spitted an animal and cooked it right out in the open so everyone could see it, so the smell could waft across the fairground and stir the appetites of everyone who passed by."

"Oh no," Stephen groaned, seeming to realize where this story was going even before Sam had a chance to get it there.

"Anyway that day I walked in and they had this big old pig stretched out over the fire pit, they even had an apple in his mouth."

"Was it Caesar?" Stephen asked, looking a little pained.

"No it wasn't…" he seemed relieved to hear this. "It was too small to be the pig I raised, but…it scared me anyway, scared me enough to decide right then and there that I wanted no part of the 4H anymore."

"Why? I mean it wasn't your pig."

"True, it wasn't my pig, but it was someone's pig and seeing it that way made me realize that whoever had bought Caesar wasn't off somewhere feeding him potato chips and scratching his ears. His fate was probably no better than that pig over the spit and I hadn't just sold him to his death, I had done so with pride."

"That…that just sucks," Stephen stated, seeming to finally understand what she was saying. "What a truly brutal tradition."

"Yeah well, it just goes to show you that nothing in life comes without a price, including life itself."

"That's even more brutal," he assured her.

"Is it?" She went on to ask, opening her eyes and looking at him. "Why?"

"It just is is all. You make it sound like every good thing that happens is paid for by something bad occurring in turn."

"Isn't that how it really works or so it seems sometime?" She persisted, uncertain where this darkly morose line of thought came from and unable to help herself for the moment from continuing to pursue it. "How often has something truly magnificent happened to you only to be followed by something that is painful or saddening?"

He said nothing for several seconds, seeming to think on this.

"That's a really horrid way of looking at things. It makes it seems as if we have very little control over our lives, that it's just a matter of checks and balances controlled by fate and whim."

"Sometimes it seems that way," she responded, closing her eyes and feeling herself drift a little, thinking of all the checks and balances in her own life. The joy of having Sabrina was balanced out by the pain of losing her, much the same with Dan and Carl, and in the end she would no doubt be forced to add Stephen to that list as well because no matter how things turned out, no mater if the two of them walked away from that crash alive, what they had shared would be but a footnote in a story each of them told, a footnote and nothing more.

"I'm sorry Sam, but…I just can't accept that." Stephen stirred her from her state of half sleep and she opened her eyes to him yet again. "I mean if I did, I would spend the rest of my life dreading anything good happening to me because I'd know not long afterwards something awful would occur as retribution and that…that is no way to live."

"Don't you already live that way right now?" She persisted. "Of course you do, we all do, it's called waiting for the other shoe to drop." She paused for a moment taking a shallow breath that did very little to make her feel better. "You've been there Stephen, on top of the world, cloud nine, feeling as if things were so perfect, so exceedingly right, and yet somewhere in the back of your mind, there's a nibble of fear accompanied by a tiny voice that says, how long can it last and when it all falls in on you, how much are you going to suffer for your happiness?"

"That's not the same," he sounded a little shaken.

"It is the same thing because nine times out of ten something does happen, just as that little voice warned you it would and the next thing you know…you are gathering up the pieces of yet another shattered dream."

"You're not sounding much like a trooper at the moment," he quipped, trying to lighten the moment with a levity though it fell short and was followed only by silence, a tense silence that Sam could feel between them like a presence.

"I…I don't feel much like a trooper at the moment," she admitted softly. "Truth be told, I am feeling a might bit angry, furious even."

"Why?"

"Because….this is not the destiny I was hoping for and…I'm dying Stephen, whether or not I want to admit that or you want to hear it, I am dying and it's not fair alright, because…because we've only just met."

Like a bubble bursting inside of her Sam felt her anger deflate as well as the sense of dark morbidity that had accompanied it. It was a little embarrassing to admit aloud that over the course of a few hours she had gone from thinking of Stephen as merely a stranger to thinking of him as something else, something more, something she couldn't quite bring herself to label at the moment.

"So…wouldn't that be an argument to the opposite of what you previously stated?" He was smiling, and she closed her eyes so as not to look at him, feeling the flesh of her face warm and knowing that this time it was from more than just a fever. "I mean, technically, something bad happened first here, then something good. So that would mean that divine retribution works both ways would it not?"

"I…I don't want to talk about it anymore," she responded, eyes still closed yet able to see him nonetheless as he had more or less become ingrained upon her mind, an image that would remain with her long after the two of them went their separate ways, which ever ways this turned out to be.

"Sam…look at me," he suddenly whispered, his voice so low and so full of emotion that she couldn't help but open her eyes. "First, I'm not letting you die alright, so get that notion right out of your head. Second, I would be a fool not to want to pursue this…whatever this is or might become between us after we are out of this clearing and back to the real world. There has to be a reason why this happened tonight, don't you think that?'

"There is a reason Stephen, you were driving too fast and talking on the cell phone remember and I…I was lost."

"Well apparently I was as well," he stated, smiling a little, his eyes never leaving her face.

"Where were you coming from anyway? I never asked you that." She was changing the subject, taking it a little off course and he seemed to recognize this fact as his eyes narrowed a little before he opened his mouth to respond.

"I was…at a party, a premier party for my new film that's being released."

"Sounds exciting," she stated.

"Yeah well…it wasn't," he looked troubled. "What it was was a bunch of people standing around sipping champagne and telling me how wonderful they thought I was."

"And you're telling me that's a bad thing."

"Not a bad thing, just…not a good thing either," he stated, looking at her once more. "None of them meant it, it's all a bunch of bollocks and the funny thing is I was thinking just that in the midst of all of it."

Out of nowhere Sam suddenly had a mental picture of him, standing in a well lit room, thousands of people all around him dressed in their fancy clothes, sipping their fancy drinks, talking , laughing, pretending to be happy when in most cases happiness was merely a fleeting thing, forced but never embraced. Of all of them Stephen would have been the only one to see the truth in this, to know how quickly true happiness can come and then go. It was a sad picture, the picture of a man who had it all or so it seemed, but in truth, had nothing.

"I'm sorry Stephen," Sam apologized without realizing at first why.

"For what?"

"For…saying all those things about every good being paid for by something bad, for thinking…for thinking I had you all figured out the moment I knew what you were, not who you were, but what you were. It wasn't fair on my part and I …I'm sorry."

"Funny thing about that," he stated, leaning closer to her and taking her hand once more. "I thought the same thing, that I had you all figured out right from the start as well, but…I guess you can't really know someone, truly know them until you have spent a few hours trapped with them in the midst of a car crash."

"Somewhere in that title is a hit song or a hit movie," she quipped softly, surprised when all at once he leaned forward and kissed her gently. It wasn't something she had been expecting and for several seconds she merely went rigid, uncertain as to how to react, then her body relaxed at least as much as it possibly could and she returned the kiss.

"I…I think when all this is over, I am giving up my acting career."

"Why?"

"Because there are other, more important things I need to do with my life," he responded.

"Such as."

"Such as see my son, give him a chance to tell me he hates me, then find a way to get past that if it's still possible to do so." He had pulled away once more, leaning himself against the head rest of the seat she was still trapped in.

"There's always a way, it won't be easy, but…it'll be worth it in the end. Still, I'm not sure you should give up your career, at least not just yet."

"What? Why not? I told you before it…it's not exactly as I dreamed it would be."

"Only because you have been holding yourself back haven't you?" He didn't respond to this, merely glanced away, finally nodding his head in agreement. "We have it in us Stephen, isn't that what you said, to move mountains, to stir souls, you…I…both of us, we just need to delve deep."

"I did say that didn't I?" He was close to tears and with great effort Sam lifted her hand and touched his cheek, brushing them gently away, memorizing the way his eyes looked in that instant, full of emotion, full of promise, full of life.

"Do great things Stephen," she hard herself whisper, then she was drifting once more, hearing him call her name, but unable to pull herself back this time as she had before. There was a sense of peace in the darkness that surrounded her in that moment, a peace she had been denied before and without resolve, without regret, she gave herself up to it, allowed it to fill her, allowed it to envelope her.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

"Sam," Stephen called to her, unable to bring himself to lift his hand and feel for her pulse, afraid that this time, this time he would indeed find nothing there. She hadn't simply closed her eyes, she hadn't seemed to merely drift off, she had in fact succumbed or so it looked like, smiling a small knowing smile that had frightened him to the point of his immobility as far as she was concerned.

"Sam if you can hear me, wherever you are, don't…don't leave me."

When the phone in his hand rang it startled him to say the least, he opened his eyes realizing he too had drifted off though for the life of him he could not remember having done so. Once more his eyes touched upon Sam, she hadn't moved while he had been out, still wore the same peaceful expression upon her face and yet some part of him told him that she was still with him for the time being at least. How much longer he couldn't be certain and hastily he flipped open his phone.

"Hello," his voice was so low, barely a whisper that even he could not hear.

"Stephen, is that you?"

It took a lot longer than it no doubt should have for him to recognize Stuart's voice and that recognition only came about the long way as he had a sudden flash of memories associated with the man first.

"Stuart?"

"Aye it's me, where are you mate? We're all worried sick here. I got a call from the police, they said you'd been in an accident but they are having trouble locating you. Can you tell me where exactly you are?"

"You've always been a good friend Stuart, have I ever told you that before?" He heard himself ask, smiling a little, feeling weary once more, weary to the point where keeping his eyes open seemed an impossible task.

"Stephen listen to me, you have to give me some clue as to where you are. You said Rural Route 4 and we are on Rural Route 4 but we can't seem to pinpoint your location."

"There was an accident," Stephen stated as his mind attempted to clear for a moment but failed to do so, everything was running rampant, his memories, his thoughts colliding in such a way that focusing on one specific idea had become impossible.

"I know there was an accident, but where Stephen, where did it happen and why can't we find you?" Stuart sounded frantic, this much Stephen was able to wrap his mind around but that was it as the weariness took over, pulling him in, pulling him down.

"Sorry Stuart, for all the times I let you down." Stephen felt the phone slip from his ear and did nothing to stop it, turning once more to look at Sam. "I was with her the day she died." he began speaking to her once more, no longer certain as to whether she could hear him, simply needing to tell the end, to say to her what he had never found the strength within him to tell anyone else. He had touched upon this moment, briefly, shared Cecily's last words or at least part of them , then glossed over it just as he had managed to gloss over a lot of things. But there were details he had left out, important details, and he wanted Sam to know before it was too late, before he might not have another chance.

"You remember, what you said about Sabrina, the smile on her face, the look in her eyes that seemed almost a knowing…almost as if she had received the answers to the questions that the rest of us wouldn't until the moment of our deaths?" He lifted a hand and brushed a stray hair out of Sam's face, trying not to notice how still she was. "I saw that smile, that same look on Cecily the day she passed. At the time…I didn't want to believe my own eyes and in the years since I have managed to convince myself it wasn't real but…it was…"

Cecily had been so emaciated, hollowed out by cancer that often when Stephen had looked at her he had imagined he was seeing a cadaver, the shadow of the woman he loved, an entirely morbid and exceedingly depressing notion, but one he could never shake completely. It wasn't like that on the day she died however. Oh she was still painfully thin, each bone beneath the surface of her skin seemed to protrude and show itself but there had been an instant, a bright shining instant when he had looked at her wearing that smile, graced with that knowing and he had seen her, the Cecily who had stolen his heart, the Cecily who had sent him running for the hills at the thought of spending the rest of his life with her.

"Nathan needs you…" she had whispered, taking his hand in her own and clinging to it with a strength he had been certain was impossible for her to possess, all the while she had been smiling. "…and what's more, you need him."

"I didn't want to hear her, didn't want to listen," Stephen went on speaking aloud, though he had long since closed his eyes and was no longer seeing the clearing, the twisted metal surrounding him and Sam, her still form still entangled and upside down. He was instead seeing that smile on Cecily's face, hearing her words, feeling that moment of clarity when he realized that this was it, that their dreams, their hopes, their plans, all of it , they were all about to end, all about to come to a screeching grinding halt.

"Your son needs you Stephen," she had told him once more, all but crushing his hand this time and he had looked at her through his tears, looked at her, at her damnable knowing smile, and for one brief instant he had hated her, he had hated her for having the answers to questions he himself had spent a lifetime asking, had hated her for finding peace in the knowledge that her life was ending, he had hated her because already she had embraced the end and was ready for it. But most of all, more so than any of these things, he had hated her simply because he had known she was about to leave him forever.

"I was so angry with her," he said softly, feeling the memories slip away from him, but only briefly. "I couldn't understand how…how she could just… say goodbye and let it all go, let me go, let Nathan go, without raging against it, without trying to fight it."

At some point in Cecily's final moments while she had been holding his hand, while he had been leaning close, he had begun to count her breaths, silently, willing her to go on, willing the numbers to go higher.

"Twenty seven," Stephen said, opening his eyes for a moment and glancing toward Sam, who remained exactly where she had been when last he looked at her. "I got as far as twenty seven then…." Then she had simply stopped, stopped breathing, stopped living, just stopped.

"It wasn't until afterwards in those moments when I was alone with her, before they came and took her away, that I realized I didn't really hate Cecily, not then, not even a little. I hated myself more because….because I had let her go, long before she had passed away, I had let her go."

Wasted time, that was what it had all come down to, wasted time, wasted moments, gone in an instant and never again to be reclaimed.

"I didn't cry again over her after her funeral, at least not in public, not where anyone could see me," he said softly, feeling the tears he had always suppressed before fall freely once more. "The pain of losing her was mine and mine alone. I didn't share it with anyone, not her family, not my family, not even Nathan."

"You don't even act like you miss her," Nathan and once accused him of this, and Stephen had swallowed these words, buried them deep along with the unending ache over the loss of Cecily that he was certain would never go away as long as he lived.

"What Nathan didn't know, what I couldn't make him understand or simply chose not to, was that I didn't just miss his mother, I felt…cut in half, as if part of me had died with her, a part I could never get back or so I believed."

He had been left with a hollow , empty feeling inside of him and instead of fighting against it he had embraced it, let it claim him, and for so long, for so very long dwelled within it.

"It was easier," he went on to tell her.

But suddenly he was no longer certain as to whether this was the truth or not. Pushing Cecily aside, sending Nathan away, burying his grief, his guilt, his loneliness, his fears, at the time it had seemed the best thing, the only thing for him to do, the only way he could possibly survive. But in a way, it hadn't made things any better, had only served to make things worse

"Do great things Stephen," he heard these words yet again inside his mind, Sam's words or had they been Cecily's, he was no longer certain as all at once his thoughts of each of them had merged into one, had become entangled and entwined until he couldn't separate the present from the past , truth from the tales.

"Do great things," his own voice, soft, waning, and afterwards, falling into silence.

Stephen felt adrift, this was the first sensation that greeted him when next he began to rouse, the sensation of being disconnected, not just from his thoughts and from the pain that had seemed to be a constant for a time, but from himself as well, from every part of his being. For the life of him he couldn't figure out why this was, couldn't quite grasp what was happening and why, though some part of him knew he should, some part of him knew he needed to remember, that it was important for him to do so.

"You're gonna be alright, you're gonna be just fine."

"Hang in there buddy, just hang tough."

Disjointed words repeated to him time and again, they flitted through his mind the way clouds flitted through the sky on a warm summer day. Not lingering long enough to make a difference, simply passing through then passing on, only to be forgotten moments later.

How long it was before the harsh realities finally began to work their way through the dreamy haze that settled upon him he couldn't be certain, but eventually they did, beginning with that same nagging sensation that there was something he was forgetting, something he had overlooked, something important.

"Stephen, time to wake up mate."

"Stuart." He said this name even before he opened his eyes, recognizing the voice that seemed to literally whisper into his brain. After that he opened his eyes, took a long, slow look around and immediately found himself wondering where the hell he was.

"You're in the hospital," Stuart again, and once more Stephen opened his eyes, surprised to find they had at some point closed once more. This time the room around him was dark, the sky beyond the distant window, a steel grey, a hint of the sunset still lingering on the horizon.

"How long?" He heard himself ask, already feeling the pull of sleep yet again.

"Nearly two weeks Stephen. Time to get off your lazy ass and get back to living."

He faded yet again after this, the sound of his own laughter echoing in his ears.

"Stephen, open your eyes."

Stuart's voice intruded yet again on Stephen's blissful drifting, this time his words sounded less like an urging and more like a plea, a soulful earnest plea.

"Why…can't you just …leave me alone?" Stephen responded, though doing so took a great deal of effort, more so than it should have and for the first time in a long time or so it seemed he found himself wondering yet again where he was, what had happened, and why it seemed every time he opened his eyes he wanted nothing more than to close them once more.

"You listen to me Stephen and you listen to me good, if you fucking quit now, if you fucking give up, I swear to everything that is holy I will wait until the after life , hunt you down, and kill you all over again." There were tears in Stuart's voice, Stephen could hear them, but they weren't enough, not nearly enough to pull him back from the weariness that dragged him back into the arms of oblivion.

When next Stephen came too he did so on his own, slowly, bit by bit until when he finally opened his eyes, he did so feeling not as if he was ready to fade away once more, but as awake as he could be under the circumstances. Bright sunlight flooded the room around him making it seem starker and whiter then any room he had ever seen before and without the need of asking he knew he was in the hospital, could vaguely recall Stuart telling him this very thing. Again his eyes perused his surroundings, taking in the machines that appeared to be attached to every square inch of his bare flesh, and bare it was, every inch of him exposed to the world. There were so many wires, so many tubes, and each one told him more than any doctor ever would or could, that he was bad off, or at least he had been for a time. Surprisingly, he was less frightened by this knowledge then he was certain he should have been.

The sound of soft snoring drew his attention away from the electronics beeping and churning to his right and slowly he turned his head not at all surprised to find Stuart asleep in the chair next to his bed. His friends presence as well as the state of the man was even more proof to Stephen that he had been staring death in the face, wrestling with his own mortality without even having known he was doing so.

"You look like shit," he said aloud, though saying it aloud actually consisted of a squeaky hoarse sounding breath that was scarcely audible even to Stephen's own ears. Somehow though Stuart heard it, might have even sensed it, as his eyes flew open, the concern in them made all the more apparent by the dark rings that encircled them.

"I look like shit, you should s...s…s…see yourself," Stuart responded, leaning forward, seeming to do so with a slow reluctance as if he was afraid Stephen's consciousness was part of some dream and might slip away as it had so many times before.

"I have an excuse then don't I," he stated softly.

"And w...w...what excuse might that be? I mean for Christ sake you've been asleep for nearly eight weeks, you'd think some of it would be the beauty kind."

He had begun to cry then, Stuart, the strongest person Stephen had ever known in his life, began to cry, lowering his head and swallowing back his tears but seeming unable to fully digest his emotions.

"I th…th…thought…" he tried to speak once more, shaking his head and seeming to give up on the notion of forming words in that moment.

"You didn't leave me once did you?" Stephen asked, feeling his own emotions begin to ebb and flow like the coming of the tide.

"I couldn't…I mean…I'm your attorney Stephen, I had to make sure you lived long enough to pay all my legal fees."

He lifted his head then smiling weakly and Stephen chuckled softly, feeling again a weariness pulling on him. This time it was different though, it felt different and he went into it knowing its hold wouldn't keep him for long, not like it had before.

"Don't go away…I'll be right back," he told Stuart as the man knelt before him and gave Stephen a tender embrace.

"You better be or I'm coming after you."

"No more rain," Stephen whispered as the first drops touched upon his skin. He was remembering a different time, a different place, a moment that seemed only to linger on the edges of his mind and wouldn't come forward enough for him to fully recognize.

"Just lay still Mr. Morgan, we're gonna get you all tidied up."

He opened his eyes at the sound of a woman's voice surprised to find himself staring at the largest breast he had ever seen before in his life, though this might have been nothing more than a trick of the mind brought on by the fact that they were so near his face.

"I've seen every movie you ever made you know," the talking breasts went on to say, and finally they were replaced with a face, a nurse with ginger hair, a crooked smile, and the greenest eyes.

"Please don't tell me you're my number one fan," he quipped, and for several seconds she seemed to think on these words and the elusive reference that went with them, until finally she chuckled softly.

"Misery, that was a great movie as well."

"You know, all this mollycoddling is probably gonna ruin you for life." Stephen was helpless but to smile at the sound of Stuart's voice, all the more so as his friend suddenly appeared at his bedside, looking if not better, at least somewhat more put together than he had the last time Stephen had opened his eyes and found him snoring .

"Listen to you, a bloke gets a little sponge bath and suddenly he's the worst person in the world," he responded.

"Actually," Stuart commented, pausing for a moment as the nurse gathered up the rest of her things and left the room. "I was wondering how this bloke could get a little of that same treatment."

"Wrap your car around a tree Stuart and you'll get all the attention you need," Stephen responded, and the instant he did the levity in the room faded away, leaving behind and uneasy silence that hung between them for several long grueling seconds.

"How much do you want to know?" Stuart questioned finally, breaking the silence as he reached for the chair behind him and pulled it up closer to Stephen's bed. For several seconds this question was debated, mulled over, considered.

"I guess you might as well tell me everything," Stephen said, uncertain if he truly wanted to hear it all, but somehow knowing he had to.

"Well, the good news is you survived, you're still alive."

"I'm thinking that, depending on the bad news, that is still open for debate."

He was only half kidding when he said this and the expression on Stuart's face said his friend realized this fact.

"The police managed to locate you about five minutes after we spoke on the phone that day. You do remember that don't you?"

Stephen had dim recollections of talking to Stuart, dim recollections of a lot of things, which only served to make that nagging sensation deep within him become all the more insistent.

"Just so you know, you were of no help. They had to triangulate your location using your cell phone itself, or something technical like that. By the time we did manage to stumble across you, you…" for a moment he paused, taking a deep breath and seeming to struggle to regain control of himself, which, by this very action, told Stephen far more than his friend would no doubt say in words. "…you were pretty bad off."

Stephen wavered for a moment on the edge of remembrance and just as quickly as this sensation came, it was gone.

"They managed to stabilize you enough to transport you here, but…it weren't easy, and they were almost certain they were going to lose you. Can I ask, what the hell were you doing on that road anyway?"

"It shaves ten minutes off my drive time," Stephen responded almost absently, and the instant he did he recognized how absurd this statement was especially in light of recent events. He began to laugh even before he realized he was doing so, and before long Stuart was chuckling as well. His laughter ended however in a soft frightened sob he was a little surprised to find had actually come from him.

"They say you'll walk Stevie," Stuart told him, leaning closer, whatever mirth he had been feeling replaced yet again by concern. "It won't be easy. It'll be a long, hard road, but…you'll do it, if you want to."

"I couldn't feel my legs ya know," he told his friend, choking on emotions. "They were useless much of the time, wooden, dead even."

"There was some damage, to your back. But…they fixed it, did everything they could, now…the rest is up to you."

In response to this Stephen merely nodded his head, relieved somewhat to hear this, but not at all surprised to find that Stuart's revelation had done nothing to quell the insistent nagging inside of him. He had forgotten something, something important, something vital, and it had little or nothing to do with his own condition.

"She…um…she's alive you know."

In that instant, the instant his best friend in the world uttered these words, it all came back to Stephen, in one great, uncontrollable rush the memories returned. He saw again that clearing, hidden from the road, saw his jag wrapped around the tree, saw the blue car turned on its back like a squashed bug, but most of all, and more importantly , he saw her face, smiling back at him, hiding the pain, swallowing the tears, accepting the inevitable.

"Sam," he said her name softly, feeling the dam break inside of himself, all the walls that had been erected in his heart through the years, crumble into a million pieces and simply drift away.

"You…you wanna tell me about it Stephen?" Stuart asked, and all at once, more than anything in the world Stephen did want to tell him. He wanted to tell him everything, not just about Sam and the hours they had shared together, but everything, every detail he had ever hidden, every truth he had ever buried, every lie he had ever perpetrated.

"I hope you've cleared your schedule, because…this could take some time."

"No worries," Stuart responded, leaning toward him, the ghost of a smile crossing his face. "I'm charging you for this anyway."

After that Stephen began to talk, telling Stuart things he was certain he would never give voice to in his lifetime. It felt good, felt liberating, to bring everything into the light, to open the doors that had for so long been locked and barred to nearly everyone including himself. It was only when he reached the part about Sam that he felt himself hesitate and hold back a little. He wasn't certain he wanted to impart her just yet, wasn't ready to give voice to what they had shared, to what had begun in those precious moments that had most likely changed their lives forever in so many ways.

"You said she was alive, where is she?" Stephen questioned.

"Well she was here for several weeks but, the moment it was determined she could make the trip safely, her family had her transferred back to the states. I…I didn't ask where. Should I have?"

"I think…she's part of my destiny." Stephen said softly, half expecting Stuart to laugh at him, or look at him like he was crazy though his friend did neither of these things, he merely stared as if waiting for him to elaborate further. "She…she was here on holiday, well sort of a holiday. See, it all began for her with a visit to a gypsy psychic named Madame Zoltar."

"Alright Stephen, here it is in a nutshell," the man in the white coat told him, and for several seconds Stephen did his best to concentrate on what it was his doctor was saying. It wasn't all that easy, as first it seemed all men of medicine spoke to their patients as if they too had graduated magna cum laude, and second, it was just the same thing they had been telling him for nearly two weeks. He didn't want to hear anymore how lucky he had been to survive, didn't want to know how close he had come to being crippled, and most definitely was tired of everyone pointing out to him how much worse things could be.

"Just think, you could have ended up a paraplegic," one of the nurse had made this observation that very day as a matter of fact, and it had taken all that Stephen had inside himself to hold back his angry retort. He was tired of being waited on, tired of being treated like an invalid, he wanted to start getting better, start walking again, or at least start the journey that would eventually have him doing just that.

"Enough of the bullshit doc, how long before I can get out of here?" He asked, interrupting the man just as he had gone into a long spiel about spinal injuries and the serious nature of them.

"Well…best guess I would say you have a few more months here at the very least. You are going to require a lot of therapy if you ever want to stand on your own, let alone walk again."

"Stephen, it's not magic, they can't just…wave a wand and make it all better. You nearly died mate, and coming back from that well…it won't be easy."

As always, Stuart was the voice of reason and with a deep sigh Stephen lay his head back on his bed, closing his eyes, lost for a moment in thoughts of Sam. Two weeks had passed since he had awoken completely and told Stuart the whole tale, two weeks that felt like an eternity, and everyday he found himself thinking of her more and more, wondering over her condition, praying she was doing alright, praying for the moment when he would be able to see her again.

"There's a very good chance that what happened between the two of you was only a result of the moment you shared, you do know that don't you?" Stuart had told him this, and though some part of him had recognized the truth in this statement, another part of him, the larger part, couldn't help but think otherwise. There had to be a reason for what happened, something much bigger and more substantial then that he had been driving too fast, that he had been on his phone, that he hadn't been paying attention. He and Sam had been brought together in that moment, in that one instant of inevitability for a purpose, and regardless of what others told him, regardless of what his own rationale dictated, he knew he had to find out for certain what that reason was.

It wasn't just Sam however that had him frustrated and ready to move forward with his recovery. He had been thinking a great deal about Nathan as well. In so many ways he now realized he had shortchanged his son, shortchanged himself as well as far as the boy was concerned. Stephen now realized he hadn't just given up his child, Cecily' s child, he had given up every chance, every possibility, every moment of happiness he might have had and shared with his son. Looking back, his reasons for doing so no longer seemed as important and valid as they once had. In fact, in light of everything, they seemed a bit selfish, more than a bit in fact, completely selfish.

"It's what's best for him."

"Best for him…or for you?"

How many times had this conversation passed through his mind since that moment, the moment when he had stood on his parents doorstep, his son beside him, their life, the life that he had built with Cecily, in shattered pieces all around them? Several times since the crash he had actually dreamed about it, dreamed he was again standing there in that instant, his son at his side, their life broken and torn apart, only this time, this time instead of doing what was best for himself, he had done what was best for Nathan, had packed him and his belongings back inside the car and drove him away from there, drove him home, the home he should have had, the home he should have grown up in.

"He at least deserves the chance to hate you," Sam had told him this, and he had known she was right then, and in retrospect, had come to agree with her all the more. Nathan did deserve that right, and maybe, maybe that was all he would ever do is hate him, maybe he would never get past it, would cling to that hatred forever. There was always that chance and in too many ways Stephen wouldn't blame him if he did, but there was also the chance that he would one day let it go, let it fade away and come to once more think of him as someone other than the man who had tossed him aside when he had been needed the most. Maybe he would never call him Dad again or consider him anything other than an intrusion into his life, but, it would be enough, would be more than enough in Stephen's opinion.

"You don't even act like you miss her." Nathan had accused him once, and the time had come to set the record straight on that, to set the record straight on a lot of things as a matter of fact.

"I'd like to start your physical therapy next week if you think you're up to it," the doctor stated all at once, and this did capture Stephen's attention. "It isn't going to be easy but if you work hard and I mean really hard, I think we can have you on your feet and walking out of here in about six weeks."

"Well, that sounds good to me." Stephen responded softly.

"Yes, well…we'll see if you feel the same way a week from now," the doctor quipped lightly, chuckling softly as he left the room, leaving Stephen alone with his thoughts, alone with his concerns.

"I… I can't find her." Stuart stated later that same day when he came back to visit. He was looking more like his old self then he had in the days following Stephen's awakening, gone were the dark circles under his eyes, he had started to sleep at home again, started to go back to work, no longer had his life on hold and for that Stephen was grateful.

"I managed to locate several Samantha Reynolds in the Pennsylvania area, but finding the right one is the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack."

"What about here, the hotel she stayed in, the rental car she was driving? Surely they have some information."

"They do Stephen, but they aren't willing to share it, not even for you."

He seated himself heavily in the chair to Stephen's left and without even having to look at him, he could sense Stuarts worry, like a physical presence it seemed to fill the room.

"There's a chance you might never find her, you know that don't you?"

He did know this, was loathed to admit it, but knew it nonetheless.

"Then there's the possibility that maybe she doesn't want to be found, have you thought about that?"

"Why must you be so damn honest all the time?"

"I can't help it Stephen, there are just some facts that have to be faced, regardless of whether or not you want to they still need to be faced. " To this Stephen said nothing, merely glanced away, staring toward the window, watching the last of the day wane into night, remembering all too well the many times he had shared the sunset with Cecily and the one moment he had done this very same thing with Sam.

"So what now? Do I keep looking…or….?"

"Do great things Stephen," these were the last words she had spoken to him, words that had remained with him every moment since she had uttered them.

"No," he heard himself say. "No…if …if I am meant to find her, if she is my destiny and I hers, then…some how, some way, we'll find each other again without trying."

To this Stuart merely nodded his head, saying nothing, saving what little honest remarks he might have had.

"Do great things Stephen."

"I promise you…I will."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Sam couldn't remember the last time she had slept through the night. It was well before the accident, that much she was certain of, but in all honesty, a lot of her memories of before, memories of Sabrina, of Carl, of Dan, had become a bit hazy in her mind and she wasn't entirely certain she could trust herself to recall even a minute detail as to when she might have spent an entire night slumbering without waking up.

"It's temporary, it'll pass. Before long you'll recover all your memories. I promise you that." How many doctors had told her that, too many for her to count on one hand and already a year had come and gone without this happening.

She had forgotten so much, couldn't even recall the color her daughter's eyes had been without looking at a picture of her.

"Maybe it's for the best Samantha," he mother had told her more than once, and in some ways she couldn't help but agree with this statement. Her mind was at rest much of the time, gone were the battling demons that always seemed to be waging war inside her thoughts, gone were the painful images, the heartbreaking recollections, the inevitable truths that too often she had faced at the cost of her own sanity. She was at peace, more often than not, completely at peace for the first time in her life or so she assumed, and there were moments, very long moments in fact, when she thought this might be a blessing rather than a curse.

But there was a downside to it, a slippery slope that lead into darkness and nothing more. Forgetting the bad also meant forgetting the good as well. She struggled at times to recall the sound of her daughter's laughter, to remember how it had felt when Dan had held her, and those precious few moments when she and Carl had been as one soul. These things had been erased as well and with them had gone every detail, every moment she had spent in that clearing with a man named Stephen Morgan.

"Maybe that's for the best as well. I mean, you nearly died because of him, maybe you should forget him." As always it was her mother who had been there to point this out to her, to force her to remember the many months she had fought and struggled to simply stay alive.

Someone, at some point had told her she had been lucky. Sam liked to think she had laughed when they had as truth be told she felt anything but. They said she should have died, by all rights she should have never survived the crash or more to the point the long hours she had spent afterwards trapped inside her car, bleeding out, as they so crudely put it. They told her the damage should have been fatal, seeming not to recall themselves that it nearly had been, that she had almost died not once but a whopping six times just in the first few hours of her hospitalization.

"We're losing her," she had a dim notion of these words being said over her time and again until they had engrained themselves upon her mind. But somehow, somehow she had struggled on; somehow she had made it through.

"You must have an angel watching over you," a nurse had told her when she had finally awoken, and that was when her miraculous recovery had become anything but miraculous and far from a recovery. There was an angel, one that had been a part of her life all too briefly, only she couldn't remember exactly who she had been and what had happened to her.

"There was a lot of head trauma, its possible there might have been permanent damage, we really can't be certain until she's physically able to tell us."

By then, the holes in Sam's memory had already become more than apparent to everyone. She'd had to relearn everything right from the beginning, how to talk, how to walk, how to go to the bathroom by herself, how to hold a cup without spilling. Looking back now, no one would ever know she had been reduced to nothing more than an infant, learning the basics of how to be a person, the basics of how to live and yet they still told her she was lucky, an ironic statement at best.

"Did I used to be able to sleep all night?" In unison both her parent lifted their eyes from their respective newspapers and looked in her direction as she entered the kitchen, their kitchen. It had been decided that she would live with them for awhile, a decision to which she had no vote on and had instead been forced to quietly comply, the way she quietly complied with a lot of things these days. Without so much asking, her mother had cleaned out her apartment, turned over her keys to the super, literally stripped away whatever sense of independence Sam had ever possessed,

"Of course you did, why would you ask such a question? Are you having trouble sleeping? Are you in pain? Should I call the doctor?" Her mother's response to her question was exactly as Sam should have known it would be and she looked to her father for help, unable to keep from smiling as he rolled his eyes and buried his nose back in the newspaper before him.

"Mom, it was just a question alright, don't go getting all concerned."

"I have to be concerned about you," she sniffed in response, a sense of long suffering echoing in her words. "If I wasn't concerned you certainly wouldn't be."

"I just…I've been having these dreams… I think…I don't always remember when I wake up, but…"

"Maybe they aren't dreams, maybe they are memories returning," her mother stated with a shrug that was her attempt at nonchalance, an attempt that failed miserably.

"I think…I think I'd like to go out today," she stated, ignoring her mother's words as well as the look this statement elicited from the woman.

"Fine, where shall we go?"

"I think she means alone Marge," her father stated, drawing the paper back from his face long enough to give Sam a wink. With all she had forgotten, her father's love for her wasn't one of those things.

"Oh I don't know about that. I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"Mom, I'll be fine."

"What if you forget where you're going? What if you get lost and can't remember how to get back? You're not so good with numbers right now; you won't even be able to call us if that happens."

In the end it was a lot easier for Sam to simply let the woman drive her, rather than argue about it.

"Good luck," her father had told her as she was on her way out the door her mother fussing over her the entire way.

"Thanks, I'll need it."

"So, what did Dan want?"

"Fifteen minutes," Sam quipped with a smile, casting a glance in her mother's direction. "It took you fifteen minutes to ask. That has to be some sort of record or something."

The look on her mother's face said she was not amused and only served to make Sam laugh all the more.

"You aren't going to tell me are you?" She asked, glancing away for a moment.

"He was just checking on me, he does that now and then."

Dan had in fact called upwards of forty times since she had been released from the hospital. In each instant they had chatted for no more than a few minutes at a time, mostly about things that were insignificant or unimportant. Sometimes, every now and then, Dan would broach the subject of Sabrina though he did so cautiously, carefully, almost as if he was afraid of saying the wrong thing, sparking the wrong memory.

"I miss her," he had even gone so far as to admit, dropping the subject afterwards sounding almost frightened by his emotional reaction to this thought and the words they inspired.

Sam had yet to decide if his calls were welcome or not. She didn't mind hearing from him, was grateful for the intrusion on her otherwise long and often troublesome recovery. Some part of her couldn't help but wonder why he suddenly seemed so interested in her well being. For nearly five years Dan had gone about his life as if she had never been a part of it and she had learned to live with that, had learned to accept that their time together had come and gone. Now it was almost as if he wanted to make up for that somehow and Sam wasn't quite sure how she felt about this just yet.

"What does his wife think of him calling you? Does she even know?"

"You know mom I didn't ask him," she snapped a little, immediately regretting doing so as instantly her mother took on an expression of hurt and averted her eyes elsewhere.

"You can't blame me for being curious," she mumbled.

"I'm sorry alright, I…I didn't meant to be short with you. It's just…I really don't feel like talking about Dan right now."

"I' betting she doesn't," her mother commented with a hint of derision in her voice and wisely Sam chose to ignore this as well as her statement, saving herself no doubt from yet another long lecture about Dan.

"Where are we going anyway?" Her mother questioned after a time. Silence had again settled between them, a welcome silence that hadn't lasted as long as Sam would have liked.

"There, we're going there." Sam stated, lifting a hand and gesturing toward a building on the far side of the street.

"I thought we decided seeing this was a bad idea."

"No, you decided that, not me," Sam countered, opening the car door and climbing out the instant her mother pulled to the curb. "You Don't have to come with me, but…I'm going in."

Without so much as a glance in her mother's direction Sam took a step toward the neon lit theatre door, stepping inside and casting a glance toward a large movie poster, smiling a little at the rendering of Stephen. He looked nothing like the man she had spent hours trapped with. The man she saw staring back at her no longer appeared to be haunted by his past, afraid of facing it. He looked alive,

"So does she?" Her mother questioned once more the moment the apology was offered, and Sam couldn't help but chuckle realizing immediately she had fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book as far as her mother was concerned, the guilt trip.

"You are a real piece of work," she commented, shaking her head and walking away, feeling more so than seeing her mother catch up to her yet again, refusing to so much as look at the woman for the time being. "He…invited me to dinner this evening." She said after a time, not because she wanted to share the details of her recent conversation with Dan but because she needed to share them with someone and unfortunately there was no one else around in that moment but her mother.

"You told him no right?" Her mother questioned hastily.

"I…actually…I told him I would," she admitted softly, again feeling more so than seeing her mother's reaction to this.

"Need I remind you he is remarried, that he has two beautiful little boys and a wife that loves him."

"No mom, you needn't remind me and it's just dinner alright, it isn't as if we are going to sneak off somewhere and…" Sam couldn't bring herself to finish these words remembering all too well what happened between her and Dan before her trip to London. For the life of her she couldn't understand how she had managed to forget so many details about her past and yet some things chose to linger inside her damaged mind.

"Personally I think it's a bad idea, but what do I know, I'm just your mother," She delivered these words as she walked away and for a moment Sam simply stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk looking after her, remembering vaguely a promise she had made, one she had yet to keep.

"You look…beautiful," Dan said softly as Sam seated herself across from him, tossing the shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders onto the chair behind her.

It never ceased to amaze her that in all the years that had passed, all the moments, painful and otherwise that had come and gone, Dan still managed to look so much like the handsome young man he had been in high school. There were a few extra lines, around his eyes, across his forehead, a little grey in his hair, a hint of knowing in his gaze, but basically he still looked like the swarthy football player who had seated himself across from her in art class and proceeded to win her heart.

"How are you Sam?" he asked next, sipping his wine and somehow managing to appear nervous and nonchalant at the same time.

"I'm fine…as fine as I can be I guess."

"Your mom still driving you crazy?" He questioned with a smile that immediately set her heart to pounding.

"Have you ever known her not to?" She quipped, glancing away, averting her attention, not wanting to feel the way she was feeling in that moment, not wanting to remember the times the two of them had been more than just separate people living separate lives.

"I'm surprised she didn't come with you," he joked, but when Sam looked at him she saw very little humor in his eyes, in fact he looked more concerned than anything.

"Is that your way of asking if I told her about tonight, about us having dinner?"

"Well…did you?" He questioned after a moments hesitation and she felt herself smile as well, though there was no humor in this either.

"Yeah, I told her. She wasn't thrilled. As a matter of fact, she asked me not to come, all the way up until the moment I left the house."

"And yet you still came. I'm…honored that you would defy your mom's wishes for me."

Again he was trying to make a joke and failing miserably.

"She was concerned, kept asking me if Alyson knew we were going to dinner," Sam stated, taking note of the way Dan flinched a little when she said these words. "Does she?"

"Are you hungry Sam?" He asked in lieu of a response, and with a shake of her head and a feeling of nausea, Sam rose, retrieving her shawl and walking away.

Dan caught up to her outside, some part of her had known he would, in fact, some part of her might have been hoping he would.

"Sam, wait," he called, jogging to catch up and finally stepping into her path once he had.

"Why did you invite me to dinner tonight Dan? Were you hoping for a repeat of what happened the last time we saw one another because if you were I have to…."

"No," he said hastily, interrupting her before she could finish her rant and that was precisely what she had begun to do rant. "Look," he said, taking her by the arm and pulling her into the shadow of the restaurant. "I asked you to dinner tonight because there was something important I wanted to discuss with you."

"And that is?" She questioned seriously.

"You're home early." Sam scarcely hard these words or noticed her mother as she more or less stumbled into the kitchen feeling a little shaken, a little shocked, a little numbed. "Sam, are you alright?"

"I'm…yeah…I'm fine," she mumbled, though these words seemed perfunctory and nothing else. She didn't feel fine, as a matter of fact she felt anything but, and with this in mind she seated herself at the kitchen table, certain all at once if she didn't, she might faint.

"Something happen tonight with Dan?" her mother asked, seating herself across from her, pressing a hot cup of what smelled like tea into her chilled hand.

She had walked home from the restaurant, actually, she had stumbled home from the restaurant was more like it, finding her way through town without the need of thinking about it, which probably was why she had made it in the end.

"Sam, are you alright?" Her mother asked once more, and this time Sam turned her attention to the woman, remembering the thousands, or was it millions of times the woman had asked this very question. Almost always, in her response, Sam had lied, had told her she was, had covered the truth and for no other reason than it was easier to do so then it was to open herself up, to bare her soul and make herself vulnerable to her mother's intrusions into her life.

"No…no I'm not," she heard herself mumble the truth for the first time, and surprisingly enough it felt good to do so.

"What…what happened tonight?" Her mother questioned, stumbling a little on her own words, seeming somewhat surprised as well by Sam's response.

"Dan…Dan asked me back," she whispered, still so completely stunned by this that even saying it aloud didn't make it seem real or possible.

"He what?"

That had been Sam's reaction as well, not so much the words but the obvious expression of complete and utter shock, mixed with a little horror.

"I said…I want us to try again," Dan had told her in a soft voice, still holding her arm as the two of them huddled together in the shadows outside of the restaurant .

"Dan…you're married to Alyson, you have two sons by her, you can't just…"

"I made a mistake Sam. I know that now, in marrying her, in walking away from you. It was all a mistake, I just…"

"Just what?" Her mother questioned in the midst of Sam's retelling of the events, and for a moment she let the memories fade, sipping her tea, grateful for the warmth that seemed to cut a path through the chill that had settled upon her, inside and out.

"He said he had gotten scared, after Sabrina…after my breakdown. He'd run away, run to Alyson and now, in retrospect, he knew this had been a mistake."

"I didn't know what to do with you, for you," Dan had gone on to explain. He had released her arm by this point and had begun to pace a little, running a hand through his hair and casting frightened glances in her direction. "You were so…so broken, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to figure out how to put the pieces back together again. In the end, running seemed like the only thing for me to do."

"That…bastard," Her mother said in a low, menacing voice and for a moment Sam nearly choked on her tea, surprised to hear her mother curse as she seldom did so. "I hope to God you hit him or something because I gotta say, he deserved to be hit."

"No, I didn't hit him," Sam assured her. What she had done was listen to what Dan said, really listen, hearing the words in between the words, the hidden meanings that she might have otherwise have overlooked or chosen not to see at all. At some point as Dan continued to talk about the life they could once more have together, the happiness they could reclaim, Sam had stopped listening, simply shut him out, shut it all out, and looked at Dan, really looked at him in a way she might not have looked at him before or ever had it not been for the accident, for the hours she was trapped inside her car, for the fight she had waged in order to survive, for Stephen. What she saw was not the boy he had been, but instead the man he had become, a man who wasn't quite as solid as he had been in his youth, a man who had become humbled by life itself, a man who was just as flawed and cracked and confused as she herself was, simply…a man.

"I hope you at least told him off," her mother interjected into her thoughts, and Sam smiled a little at this, turning her attention away from Dan for the time being and focusing it instead on the woman seated across from her.

"Mom, you remember when I was nine and you bought me that pink party dress, you know the one with all the frills and lace?"

For a moment her mother didn't respond, seeming a little confused by the shift in topics, then she began to nod her head, slowly, quizzically.

"I seem to recall it was for Brenda Babcock's birthday party. You looked so beautiful, like an angel, then you had to go and fall in the mud."

"I didn't fall in the mud," Sam responded softly. "I actually…jumped in if you wanna know the truth."

"But you said…"

"I know what I said mom, but now I'm telling you what really happened." Sam stated, reaching out to take her mother's hand not surprised to feel her shy away for a moment before accepting the gesture. "I hated that dress. It was like being wrapped inside a ball of cotton candy."

"But you looked so…"

"So girly, and that was the last thing I wanted at that time, to look girly."

"So you went and ruined it by jumping in the mud." Her mother stated, clicking her tongue a little and shaking her head, though in her eyes Sam was certain she saw a hint of amusement.

"I had to do something. If I hadn't killed that dress you would have kept trying to make me wear it or ones like it, and that would have totally screwed up my attempts a being the son dad never had."

"Whoever said dad wanted a son?" Her mother asked, and Sam found herself a little speechless for a moment at this.

"I wasn't fine by the way," She went on to say, lowering her head a little as she did so. "You kept asking me if I was alright…all my life it seems you have asked me that, and I kept telling you I was…I was fine, but…I wasn't."

"I know," her mother responded, and Sam swallowed hard lifting her eyes to the woman once more. "I knew all along. Why do you think I kept asking? Because I kept hoping the next time I did you would tell me the truth, open up to me, let me in, let me share some of that burden you always seemed so bound and determined to carry around."

"I guess I just thought, if I told you the truth about Sabrina, about Carl, about…Dan, told you everything, you …you would never leave me alone, like I thought I wanted you to. Only now I'm thinking maybe that wasn't what I really wanted all along."

"You were never alone Sam, even when you might have thought you were, I was always there with you."

These words touched Sam, touched her in ways she hadn't expected and before she knew what was happening, before she had a chance to question herself as to what she was doing, she began to talk, telling her mother all the secrets that she had buried for too long, all the truths she had never shared with the woman before, all the lies she had spoken and now wanted simply to recant.

"So…what did you tell Dan?" Her mother questioned, hours and two pots of tea later, when all the doors had been opened inside of Sam and for the first time, ever maybe, her demons truly were at rest.

"There's someone else." Were the words she had spoken, thinking not simply of Stephen in that moment, but of herself as well. She wasn't the same person she had been months earlier, the person who had given herself up to Dan and the memories of the life they had shared, the same person who had clung to the past with the desperate notion that doing so might in some way help her reclaim it. She had changed, changed in so many ways it was a little scary, but frightening or not, Sam knew in that instant that she could never go back to what she had once been, the time had come instead to go forward and step into the person she might yet become.

"I sent him home to Alyson," she told her mother softly, leaning back in her chair remembering the look of disappointment that had crossed Dan's face.

"I don't think it's me you want Dan," she had stated, reaching out to take his hand, knowing it would probably be the last time she touched him in that way or any way for that matter. "You want what I represent, a moment in time that has come and gone. Go home to your wife Dan, that's where you really need to be right now." She had embraced him then, held him close for a moment, remembering in that instant another time, another place, when the world had seemed so perfect, when life had seemed so perfect, when they had been a part of something greater then themselves, when an angel, a fleeting, brilliant, beautiful angel had given meaning to their existence.

"I'll never forget us," she had told him, kissing his cheek and walking away.

"So what happens now?" her mother asked, as a silence settled between then, a peaceful, golden silence.

"Now I do exactly as I said, I go forward and step into the person I might yet be."

For several seconds her mother said nothing, she merely sat there staring at her, the remnants of the tears she had shed throughout the night lingering on her weathered face.

"Tell me you aren't still listening to the words of advice from some gypsy psychic," her mother quipped, and Sam couldn't help but smile at this as well, reaching out to take her mother's hand again.

"No, this time I'm listening to someone much wiser, someone who once called me a trooper and asked how much time I was going to waste before I figured out I had a right to live again."

"Well…whoever it is, she sounds brilliant," her mother responded with a warm chuckle.

"She is," Sam stated softly, still holding her mother's hand. "She truly is."

There were no tears this time or crossed words when Sam said her goodbyes to her mother and father. Well, maybe a few tears, but not for wrong reasons, for all the right reasons this time.

"I hope you find what you are looking for," her mother had told her.

"Yeah, me too," Sam stated, holding her close for a moment, savoring the sensation of being so near her in so many ways.

"Call me the instant your plane lands and be careful in the airports, put your money somewhere safe, don't lose your passport and watch out for panhandlers." Her mother chided her, and Sam couldn't help but smile, some things would never change and oddly enough she was glad for that.

Like last time she had made the trip to London there were no promises waiting for her there, only possibilities, a destiny to be fulfilled, but a destiny that was a lot more uncertain than it was certain.

It had been a year after all, almost to the day since she and Stephen had made their fated acquaintances with one another and during that time, while she had been struggling and fighting to reclaim her life, he had never been far from her thoughts, although those thoughts had at times been hazy and without form.

"Do great things, " those had been the last words she had spoken to him, could vaguely recall mumbling them right before the peaceful darkness that had been surrounding had finally claimed her. They had stayed with her however, during the long months it had taken her to recover, they had remained inside of her, echoing in the depths of her heart.

"How far you planning to go love?" The man at the rental place questioned Sam as she eyed the car he was giving her, one altogether too reminiscent of an ugly blue vehicle that she had spent entirely too much time trapped inside of during her last visit to the UK.

"I'm not sure really," she responded, tossing her bags inside the homely automobile and giving the guy a warm smile. "Last time I made it about ten minutes out of London, here's hoping I get further than that this time."

He looked confused at her words but smiled politely as she piled inside the heap, waving in his general direction as she drove off amidst London rain.

"Some things never change," she whispered softly, peering through the lines of water running down the windshield of her car.


	11. Understanding prologue

Prologue

"You sure you want to do this?" Stuart questioned, and Stephen sighed wearily, casting a glance at his friend , not bothering to answer the question that had been asked not once but a thousand times or so it seemed in the long drive. "I just…I worry about you mate."

"I know," Stephen responded softly, casting a glance out the window to the soggy scenery flying past, the same scenery he had seen time and time again but had never truly bothered to notice until that very moment.

He had been blind in some ways. He realized that now. So blind, his mind and heart closed off to everything except his own suffering, his own pain, his own struggle.

"I hate you," Nathan's words to him the first time Stephen had stood before the boy, who could no longer be considered a boy in truth, but had become a man, his baptism into this rank the loss of his mother and the subsequent loss of his father as well.

"Yeah, I know you do," Stephen had told him, swallowing hard his own emotions. "You…have every reason to hate me and I'm not here to try and talk you out of that, I just…I want you to know something."

"What?" Nathan had cried, throwing this word at him as if it were a sharpened knife and he was trying to inflict wounds upon Stephen, wounds as painful as the ones he himself had been made to endure.

"I wanted you to know…you were right. You said I acted as if I didn't even miss her and…that was the truth… I was acting, playing a part and nothing more, pretending, wanting to make everyone believe I…I was strong when the truth was…I…wasn't"

Nathan had begun to cry by then, silent tears that had rolled down his cheeks. He hadn't so much as lifted a hand to brush them away, had in fact seemed unashamed of his grief and for that one act, Stephen had realized his son had truly become a man, more of a man than he himself would ever be.

"She…she deserved my tears. She deserved my pain over her loss. She deserved…so much more than what I gave to her memory, what I gave to you, and I came here today to tell you…I'm sorry, for shortchanging her, for shortchanging myself."

He had been prepared to walk away at that point, had been ready to turn and go, having said what he needed to say.

I …keep a picture of her beside my bed," Nathan stopped him before he could make a full retreat, and breathlessly Stephen had turned in the boys direction, waiting for him to continue. "I…I used to dream about her every night after…after she died."

"Yeah…me too," he whispered in response.

"Now when I dream about her, it's always the same, she's an angel looking out for me somewhere up above." Stephen closed his eyes at this, able to imagine Cecily just as his son described her, as an angel, a golden, beautiful angel. "Guess that sounds stupid huh?" Nathan cleared his throat scrubbing an arm over his face and looking in Stephen's direction.

"No…it doesn't."

"I…I saw your movie," he said next, changing the subject hastily.

"You …you did?" Stephen asked, secretly thrilled to hear this.

"I've seen all your movies…every last one of them."

"Why?" He questioned, this one word exploding from his lips as if it had been choking him, had been stuck in his throat and only by force had he managed to dislodge it.

"Because you may have forgotten me, but…I never forgot you…never." Stephen knew his son had not intended these words to be mean or spiteful and yet they had cut him deeper and with more vengeance than anything else he could have said.

"I never forgot you Nathan I just…I got a little lost if you must know, took a wrong turn and forgot for awhile what it was that really mattered the most."

For a long time after he said this Nathan remained silent, staring at Stephen with eyes reminiscent of Cecily's, too reminiscent in fact which eventually forced Stephen to look away.

"Is that…is that really what happened to you? The car crash and all?" Nathan finally spoke, and Stephen once more lifted his eyes to the boy.

"Yeah."

Stephen had never intended to put it out there for everyone to see, the story of the crash, the details of those moments that he had shared with Sam. They had been his and his alone, something so precious, something so dear to his heart, made all the more so by the fact that even months after the crash he had been unable to locate her.

"It's like she simply vanished," Stuart had told him after the last attempt at finding her had failed.

"It's alright, don't worry about it anymore." Stephen had assured him.

In the end he had agreed to make the movie not because of the pressure everyone was putting on him to tell the story, not because his agent begged him to or because the production company threw more money at him then he had ever seen in his life. He agreed to make the movie for one reason only.

"Do great things Stephen."

He had made it for Sam, for her and no one else, to fulfill a promise he had made. It was one of the greatest thing he had ever done, not the movie per se, which had in fact been a smash, but the entire event in itself. It had changed him, altered his perception of life in so may ways, ways that he now knew were for the better.

"I …I liked it you know. It…was good, except…"

"Except what?" He had asked, unable to help but chuckle a little at how nervous he suddenly was. Critics all over the world had watched the film. They had called it the greatest accomplishment in his career. Not once, not one single time had he been concerned about anyone's reaction, it hadn't mattered, wouldn't have made a difference and yet there he was standing before a fifteen year old kid all but panicked over what he might say.

"Except I didn't much care for the ending," Nathan stated, taking a step toward him, the first he had made in Stephen's direction since they had come face to face. "You …you just sort of left it up in the air. You never told whether or not the two of them ever met again. Did they end up together?"

"That's because fate hasn't written that part yet," he had responded softly, thinking for a moment of Sam, but not for the first moment, for the millionth or billionth, he couldn't be certain, had in fact lost count in the time since the accident.

"I'm thinking they'll end up together some day," Nathan had whispered, taking another tentative step toward him.

"Like I said, fate hasn't written that part yet."

"So then don't wait for fate to write it, do it yourself."

"How much further?" Stuart asked all at once, pulling Stephen from his thoughts and he lifted his head casting a glance around.

"Not much, just up around the next corner."

There were still a lot of hard feelings toward him as far as Nathan was concerned. Stephen didn't bother to kid himself on this fact. His son was still angry, a well deserved anger that had slowly, over the past few months begun to cool a little.

"You have her eyes you know," Stephen had told him during their second meeting. The two of them had made the long drive to the cemetery where Cecily was buried, a place Stephen had seldom visited, but not because he didn't want to, simply because doing so would have shattered the façade of his actually living life a lot sooner than he was prepared for.

"She used to call me pickle didn't she?"

"Yeah," he had responded hoarsely, struggling with his own emotions and rapidly losing the battle within himself.

"It's okay you now…to cry…" Nathan had assured him, his tone, his whole demeanor so much like his mother's that in the end Stephen had been helpless but to do just that, to weep, for what had been lost, for the wasted years he could never get back, for the time he had spent too numb to feel, too drunk to care.

"So you quit huh?" His third meeting with Nathan, and this time the boy had come to London, to Stephen's house.

"Yeah I quit."

"Why?"

Other than to Stuart, this was a question he had avoided answering, deciding it was in truth no one's business but his own.

"I quit because I did what I set out to do all those years ago when acting seemed the most important thing in my life. I moved mountains. I stirred souls. I did great things."

After that the meetings with Nathan became much easier. They became less about dealing with the pain of the past and more about getting to know each other the people they had become.

"She's pretty," he had told his son that very day, and Nathan had blushed a little, the tops of his ears turning red just as Stephen's did when he was embarrassed.

"I think I love her dad."

It was a heart stopping moment, one he had never thought would come and for a long time after his son had spoken these words he had merely stood there holding his breath half expecting the young man to quickly recant his statement.

"You…you've never called me that before now," he had said softly.

"That's who you are isn't it, my dad." Nathan had said with a lopsided grin. "Alright so, maybe you aren't perfect, maybe you have made mistakes, lots of mistakes, but…you're still my dad. It just…it took you a little longer to figure that out than it does most guys."

Nathan had graduated that very afternoon and Stephen had been there, seated beside his mother and father, tears streaming down his face as he watched a small frail child a little lost, a little lonely walk up to the podium, and a man, a strong man, strength tempered and tested already so much in life, walk away, into his future, into the arms of promise, head and heart filled with all the possibilities that life had to offer him.

"Do great things," he had whispered softly. "Do great things."

"There's a car parked over there," Stuart stated, pointing out the obvious.

"I see it," he responded softly, trying desperately to control the pounding of his heart, but having difficulty doing so.

"What if it's some crazed fan or something? I mean…everyone knows this is the place where it happened."

"It's not a crazed fan," Stephen had assured him, opening the car door and stepping out, feeling the blacktop beneath his feet, hearing the sounds of birds, the wind soughing through the branches of trees, feeling the sunlight warm upon his skin.

"You want me to go with you…just in case?" Stuart had asked, opening his car door as well.

"It's not a crazed fan Stuart," he said once more, looking back at the man who had been by his side nearly his entire life or so it seemed. "I love you man, you know that don't you."

"I …I love you too Stephen," he responded to these words, seeming a little surprised to hear them in that moment.

"Go back to the city. I'll call you later, we'll meet for dinner."

"What are you kidding? I'm not leaving you out here alone."

"I won't be alone," Stephen stated softly, not bothering to look back at his friend as he crossed the road walking toward the rental car, this one green in hue, but no uglier than the blue one she had driven last time.

He found himself hesitating at the edge of the incline, hesitating because he knew what he was going to find in that clearing that awaited him below. He hadn't been back there since the day they had carried him away on a stretcher, had told himself one day, one day he would revisit that spot, run his hand over the tree where his jag had come to rest, feel the smoothness on the ground where Sam's car had lay upside down, lift his eyes to the same sky that he had looked up that day as he lay in the grass, expecting the worst praying for the best, but not daring to hope.

The silence had been deafening, settling in all at once instead of gradually, enfolding Stephen like a cocoon will enfold the promise of new life….

"Do great things." She had whispered these words to him and as Stephen stepped into the clearing, his eyes moving to the figure that stood before him, her eyes lifted to the heavens he was suddenly certain he was about to do just that.

"Sam," he whispered, feeling the hand of fate begin to stir, to scribble the first line in the final act of the story of his life.

"Do great things."


End file.
